


Every Word Spoken is a Spell

by Em_Jaye



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Practical Magic (1998), Practical Magic Series - Alice Hoffman, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Practical Magic Fusion, Awesome Jane Foster, BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Brock Rumlow is a bad guy, Creepy Brock Rumlow, Domestic Violence, F/M, Family, Family Dynamics, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Magic, Meddling, Protective Natasha Romanov, Single Mom Darcy Lewis, Sisters, Spells & Enchantments, Unhealthy Relationships, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 60,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: There were whispers the day that the littlest girls arrived on the ferry from Boston. Nine-year-old Darcy and eight-year-old Wanda each held a suitcase in one hand and clasped the other tight together as they got out of the taxi. Darcy squinted in the mid-afternoon sunlight and stared up at the house her mother had told her so much about. Her new home.She didn’t hear the whispers that day. The ones that hissed that she and her sister were just the most recent in a family full of tragedy. That wondered if her mother had killed her father like all the Owens women before her. That wondered how anyone could leave their children in the care of women like May and Pepper Owens.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Peter Quill, Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff/Brock Rumlow
Comments: 601
Kudos: 391





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's heeeeeere! The Practical Magic AU that absolutely no one asked for. I was going to wait until fall and Halloween to start posting this, but my country is once again on the brink of nuclear war and half the world is quite literally on fire. So I don't know why I'm acting like I need a spookier backdrop against which to read/write this fic. 
> 
> All of the thanks and credit go to the following Darcyland friendships, without whom this fic would have stayed 3 sentences long and locked away forever in my WIP file: crimtastic, LittlePlebe, biblioworm, and Amerna. I love you ladies so so much. 
> 
> Some notes: This will be going pretty faithfully along the plot of Practical Magic (book and movie), with some obvious changes. Hopefully you don't find it tedious or a total waste of time (if you do, I welcome you to please click away and find something you enjoy more!). I'm trying to embrace the idea of leaning into tropes in 2020 and letting the idea of "just because a story's predictable doesn't mean it isn't good" release some of my writing-related anxiety this year. 
> 
> So with all of that out there, I really hope you enjoy this.

There were rules about the Owens house and the Owens women who lived within its walls. The rules were whispered in town—between children at school, repeating things they’d heard from their parents; among friends at the market or the beauty parlor; across tables at church luncheons—never too loud. Never too obvious. No one ever wanted to seem rude, after all.

The rules were simple, and they served just one purpose: to keep a firm line between the Owens family and the rest of the town.

1) Keep your distance from the rambling Victorian on Cordelia Street. If you want to purchase the soaps and tinctures the elder set of sisters offer for sale, do so at their stand at the Saturday market.

2) If you _do_ find yourself in need of something more specific, go to the back door of the house. But only after dark so that no one sees you.

3) Never get involved romantically with an Owens woman. It will only end badly.

4) Don’t mention that they’re witches. Everyone already knows.

The rules were clear and served their purpose. But they didn’t stop the whispers. The whispers had followed the Owens since the first of their family set foot on the island four hundred years ago. They’d whispered then that she was cursed. That she’d escaped her execution by making a deal with the devil. That she’d steal and feed their children to the pack of demons she kept as pets beneath her porch.

These days, the whispering was only slightly less fantastic. If you asked anyone in town what the Owens women did in that big, white house at the end of Cordelia Street, you’d be told all kinds of things. That they killed their husbands for sport. That they all could fly on Halloween night. That they’d curse anyone who tried to come near them. That they didn’t age and were secretly hundreds of years old.

It’d be up to you which of the whispers you wanted to believe. And which of the rules you wanted to follow.

There were whispers the day that the littlest girls arrived on the ferry from Boston. Nine-year-old Darcy and eight-year-old Wanda each held a suitcase in one hand and clasped the other tight together as they got out of the taxi. Darcy squinted in the mid-afternoon sunlight and stared up at the house her mother had told her so much about. Her new home.

She didn’t hear the whispers that day. The ones that hissed that she and her sister were just the most recent in a family full of tragedy. That wondered if her mother had killed her father like all the Owens women before her. That wondered how anyone could leave their children in the care of women like May and Pepper Owens.

No matter what was whispered in town the day that Darcy and Wanda arrived in their braided hair and black dresses, fresh from their mother’s funeral, it was Aunt May and Aunt Pepper that greeted them at the front gate. Each in their late sixties, with careworn faces and hands like soft tissue paper. Pepper smiled kindly, more reserved, from beneath a large, floppy sunhat while May dropped down in front of the pair of sisters and put one hand to each of their cheeks. “You’re home now, my darlings,” she said quietly before she smiled. “And in this house, we eat chocolate cake for breakfast.” As expected, this news drew the first smile either child had felt in days. It prompted May to continue. “And we never worry about silly things like combing our hair or going to bed.”

She and Pepper each took a suitcase and led the girls up the walkway to the wraparound porch where two older girls were waiting anxiously.

“Jane, Natasha,” Pepper said, addressing first the brunette and then the redhead, “why don’t you take your cousins upstairs and get them situated.”

Darcy and Wanda exchanged a quick glance. They’d only met their cousins once. Daughters of their mother’s sister who’d come to live with the aunts only a few years prior. Darcy knew that Jane was sixteen and Natasha was fourteen, and that they were as different as night and day, right down to their coloring.

Just like her and Wanda.

The only difference was that they’d lost their parents at the same time; a car accident, according to the phone call that had made their mother drop to the ground and wail when she’d answered it. Darcy was only five, but she remembered how it felt like the whole house went cold and dark to match her mother’s broken heart. How her father had gathered his wife into his arms, shhing comfort into her hair, telling her it would be alright. How long it had taken for the cold to ebb from her bones. For flavor to return to food. For the darkness to lift as her mother came back to them.

Only to be taken away again.

“There’s plenty of space for you each to have your own room,” Jane said as the reached the first landing of a stairway that seemed to spiral upward forever. “If you want.”

Bringing up the rear of their four-person caravan, Natasha caught the way Wanda’s hand tightened around Darcy’s at the suggestion. She cleared her throat and offered them a smile when they glanced back. “But the room at the top of the stairs is big enough for both of you.”

Darcy caught the look the older girls exchanged before Jane brightened. “Right,” she said and continued upward. “That’s a good one,” she added with a grin over her shoulder. “You can see the best stars from the window seat.”

They moved into the room at the very top of the stairs. The one with two single beds beneath the pitched ceiling. A window seat and a bookshelf stuffed with well-read paperbacks. A deep, squashy armchair and ottoman that Darcy had to wonder how it had made its way up the stairs. A dresser and a full-length mirror on a stand in the corner. Their suitcases were placed, one on each bed. A reminder that everything they owned would probably only fill a single drawer or two.

Natasha placed a hand on each of their shoulders before she and Jane left. “Take your time getting settled,” she said quietly. “But we’ll all be downstairs when you’re ready.”

They didn’t come downstairs for dinner. No one told them they had to beyond May calling up the stairs that it was ready. Pepper brought up bowls of macaroni and cheese and sat with them on the bed Darcy had claimed for herself while they ate.

Later, everyone stopped in to say goodnight. There were kisses placed on heads and wishes for sweet dreams and Darcy had to wonder if they would do this every night. If everyone got the same bedtime treatment or if her new family was just being extra nice to them. Either way, she decided as she pulled back the covers and slipped between the cool sheets of her new bed, she wouldn’t mind. It was nice.

The moon shone differently in their new room. Even half-full, it cast a spotlight across the floor and caught the blonde that the summer sun streaked into Wanda’s red hair as she crept from her bed into Darcy’s. Without a word, Darcy shuffled over to make way for her sister.

They lay facing each other, knees together, foreheads touching. “Do you think we’ll like it here?” Wanda whispered, her large green eyes luminescent in the moonlight.

Darcy nodded. “They love us,” she reminded her. “I can tell.” The air inside the house might have been charged with a magical energy that crackled like electricity, but the walls breathed warm with love that felt familiar like pumpkin pie and a favorite sweater in the fall. “We can be happy here.”

Wanda’s eyes filled with tears. “I was happy at home,” she whispered in a voice so tight it made Darcy’s chest hurt. “I was happy with Mommy and Daddy.”

She started to cry in earnest then and dropped her head to tuck beneath Darcy’s chin. The older of the two wrapped her arms around her sister and waited for her tears to stop. She waited for Wanda to fall asleep. For the hole in her heart to stop aching. For the world to stop taking away everyone she loved.

And when none of that came, she waited for a sign that anything was ever going to be all right again. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spells and curses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the boost in the form of your sweet excitement, friends! I hope this lives up to your enthusiasm <3

“Nat, where did you put the mugwort?” Jane asked, an edge of irritation in her voice as she grabbed a handful of glass jars and peered at the contents.

“I don’t know,” Natasha shrugged, not looking up from her book. “You had it last.”

“No I didn’t,” Jane muttered.

One of the garden cats curled itself around Darcy’s feet and began to purr. She pretended not to hear Jane’s grumbling as she tried again to focus her energy on the candle in front of her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what Aunt Pepper had told her. _The fire is inside you. You’re just letting it out._

She thought of a little flame, flickering somewhere near her heart. All she’d need to do, she reasoned, would be to push it from her chest, past her lips and onto the waiting wick. She focused hard and blew gently, like she’d seen Natasha do a hundred times.

“Darcy, you did it!” Aunt May’s voice pulled her eyes open and she found, to her delight, that the candle was lit with a tiny flame she’d conjured. May came behind her and kissed the top of her head. “Wonderful,” she commented. “So much control.”

“Good job, Darcy,” Jane added, momentarily forgetting her grousing over ingredients. Pride blossomed in her chest at the smile Jane sent her way. “I couldn’t do that until I was thirteen.”

“So don’t be discouraged,” Natasha added gently, reaching over to her right to give Wanda a nudge. “You’ll get there.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, Magic Wand-a,” May said with a smile in Wanda’s direction. “Your powers will arrive soon enough.”

“In the meantime,” Natasha went on. “Want to help me with this?”

Wanda stood from where she’d been unsuccessfully trying to copy her sister and sat on the lap that was offered her. “What are we making?” she asked, her large green eyes taking in all of the ingredients that had been gathered.

“Protection spell,” Nat said simply. “Lydia Newton came to school with a black eye yesterday,” she went at the prompting of Wanda’s intrigued expression. “And she _said_ she just ran into a cabinet, but I’m pretty sure someone in her house is to blame.”

Darcy felt her eyes widen. “Do you think it’s her stepdad?” Lydia had a little brother, Wesley, who was in Darcy’s class. More than once he’d come to school looking a little worse for the wear.

Natasha nodded and pointed to her spell book. “Can you make sure we have everything we need?” she asked Wanda. When she looked up, she caught May’s disapproving eye. “What?” she asked defiantly. “I’m not breaking the rule.”

“What rule?” Darcy asked as Wanda got up to retrieve something from the pantry.

“The most important rule in this house,” May reminded with rarely-heard sternness. “The one that says we don’t cast to hurt people.”

Natasha looked back, unwavering. “I’m not hurting anybody,” she said firmly. “The spell protects the Newton kids,” she moved her shoulders. “Not my fault if their stepdad finds he can’t beat them up anymore.”

“What’ll happen to him?” Wanda asked when she returned with a roll of twine and a small, corked jar.

“Nothing,” Nat said with a single shake of her head. “As long as he doesn’t try to hurt anyone else.”

May didn’t look convinced. She narrowed her eyes and wagged a finger in her niece’s direction. “You are walking a very fine line, young lady. And one of these days your little work-arounds are going to backfire and it’s only going to make it harder for you to live in this town.”

At that, Natasha rolled her eyes. “How much harder could it be?”

“Yeah,” Jane chimed in. “Everyone already hates us.”

“Because we're cursed?”

Wanda’s question dropped a heavy curtain of silence around the room. Darcy felt a shiver of uncertainty and something that bubbled like guilt pass over her as Aunt May exchanged a look with both of her cousins. “No,” Natasha sliced through the silence just before it had a chance to set. “They’re just jealous because we have a gift and they don’t.”

Darcy put a hand to her stomach, wishing away the feelings her family had settled there. “But we _are_ cursed,” she repeated carefully, looking from one cousin to the other until she landed on Aunt May. “You told me Daddy died because of the curse.”

“The only curse in this family is standing right over there,” Aunt Pepper said almost breezily as she pushed open the back door and deposited a large basket of herbs on the table. She nodded across the kitchen. “Your Aunt May.”

May pursed her lips in a firm line. “We won’t do them any favors by lying to them, Pepper. They should know the truth.”

“There’s no curse,” Pepper insisted.

“I don’t know how you can say that after what happened to Tony,” May muttered.

“That was an accident,” Pepper snapped.

“And my Ben?” May went on. “That was an accident too?”

“Yes.”

“It was _fate_. And the sooner these girls understand that the better off they’ll be.”

“What truth, exactly?” Jane asked as she leaned against the heavy oak table. “That anyone who gets involved with one of us is bound to end up six feet under?”

Darcy flinched. Jane was blunt, like Aunt May. Analytical and organized in how and where she presented her heart. When she tried to read her, Darcy felt the way her power came from her mind and the brilliance that lived there. Everything she could feel from Jane was crisp and bright as fresh fruit on an early summer afternoon.

“Little harsh, Jane,” Natasha said under her breath. Unlike her sister, Natasha’s power radiated from her emotions. No matter how cool she was on the outside, no matter how many times she rolled her eyes and pretended to be indifferent, Darcy could only feel the way all her magic was amplified by the size and strength of her heart. If Jane was summer blueberries in the backyard, Natasha was cinnamon tea by the fireplace in the middle of January. Safe and warm and defiant of the snow and cold just outside the door.

“Is that really why Daddy died?” Wanda asked. “Because Mommy loved him?”

May’s lips turned down in a sympathetic frown. “I’m afraid so, my darling girl.”

Pepper sighed and shook her head. “You don’t know that…” she said quietly as she began to separate the herbs she’d just picked.

“You read that letter same as me,” May challenged. “Regina heard those three knocks and not a week later—” she shook her head. “Same as I did. Same as you did.”

“Same as Mom,” Jane added. Natasha’s head snapped up. “I remember her freaking out saying someone was knocking on her bedroom wall… but she wouldn’t tell me why. And then—”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Natasha said quietly.

Jane’s shoulder moved in a shrug. “I didn’t know what it meant.”

“What _does_ it mean?” Wanda asked in a small voice.

“Three knocks,” May said before Pepper could warn her off. “It’s the warning that death gives before it comes for someone you love.”

“But the curse didn’t kill Mommy,” Darcy said carefully, a sliver of ice sliding slowly into her chest as she remembered how her mother had fallen too far for her to reach. All the colors and warmth she’d poured into the house gone overnight. She lay in bed for weeks. Crying every night. Forgetting to take care of her daughters first, and then forgetting how to care for herself as the dark specter of grief devoured her piece by piece until there was nothing left. “She died of a broken heart.”

Pepper reached out and ran a soothing hand over Darcy’s curly hair. “That’s right, sweetheart. That wasn’t a curse. That was just…” she paused and pursed her lips with a little shake of her head. “That’s what love does sometimes.”

A sharp knock on the door shattered the pensive silence that had fallen over the kitchen. They looked up to see a woman with her hands and face pressed against the glass. She had wild eyes and Darcy could taste the sharp bite of desperation coming through the door. Pepper and May exchanged a weary look before Pepper turned back to her nieces. “Darcy, Wanda, go upstairs please. Natasha, get the book. Jane, let her in.”

They went upstairs as instructed, but only to the first landing of the back staircase. Where they could still see down into the kitchen, undetected by the aunts and watch as they welcomed the woman inside and let her sit at their table.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she said, her voice shaking along with her hands. “He has to leave his wife. He has to leave her right now. He needs…” she shook her head. “We belong together,” she insisted as Darcy’s stomach turned with nausea. “He’s my destiny. He has to see that.”

“Usually destiny doesn’t require so much effort,” May said evenly while Jane placed a heavy stoneware bowl in front of the woman.

“Perhaps we could help you to find someone better suited—” Pepper suggested lightly, pouring a cup of tea.

“No!” she snapped. “I want _him_. I want him to want me too,” she went on, her chest rising and falling quickly with her rapid breaths. “Badly. So badly he can’t stand it.”

“If you’re certain,” May said with a small roll of her shoulders before she nodded to Jane. “Take her money.”

Darcy watched, feeling sick, as Natasha appeared next to her sister and dropped a handful of ingredients into the bowl before she unwrapped a small dagger and held it out.

The woman took the knife and held her long, pale arm over the bowl. “H-how much?” she asked as the blade pressed against the underside of her forearm.

“The more you want to sacrifice, the stronger the spell will be,” May answered, keeping her voice even and business-like.

She gripped the knife tightly and sank the edge deep into her skin. Darcy turned away, feeling truly sick, and pressed her face into Wanda’s knees as the woman’s blood flowed thick and dark into the bowl.

She tried to force away the sickly desperation that woman had brought with her, but it slid beneath her skin and mingled with the memory of her mother with all the light and warmth gone from her eyes. Words she’d heard earlier rooted dark and twisted around her heart. _It was fate… Daddy died because Mommy loved him… That’s just what love does sometimes._

She leaned harder into Wanda. “I never ever want to fall in love,” she whispered. “Never ever ever.”

But Wanda hadn’t looked away. She hadn’t been made sick by that woman’s obsession and she only watched with rapt attention at the blood magic the aunts were conjuring only a few feet away. Her green eyes were wide with wonder as she shook her head. “Oh, I do.”

Darcy squeezed her eyes tighter and waited for the sound of the door closing—for the oppressive sickness to dissipate—but in the silence that followed the blood dripping over the powered roots and herbs, she only heard a warning from Pepper. One Darcy was certain she and her sister were meant to hear. “Be careful what you wish for.”

Wanda found Darcy in the greenhouse the next night, plucking sprigs of amaranth beneath a full orange moon. “He’ll always hear me when I call him. No matter how far apart we are,” she said as crumbled the flower between her hands into a small bowl. She pulled a cornflower blossom next. “And he’ll have blue eyes,” she said. “That will always tell me what he’s thinking.”

Wanda sat on the back step and studied her sister, not wanting to interrupt as she watched her smile to herself and took two more flowers to add to her mix. “Strong enough to keep me safe while still being wonderfully kind.” Her fingers pulled a white penta from a cluster. “And his favorite shape will be a star.”

A small notebook was open on Pepper’s worktable. Wanda stood and picked it up, recognizing Darcy’s spell book right away. “He’ll mark birthdays with fireworks,” she read out loud from a list Darcy had composed. “And flip pancakes in the air…” she put the book down. “Darcy, what is this?”

“It’s a spell,” Darcy’s bare feet shuffled across the stone floor of the greenhouse to push open the door to the garden outside. “To summon my true love.”

Wanda frowned in confusion as she followed. “I thought you never wanted to fall in love.”

“That’s the point,” Darcy looked up and studied the moon for a moment, her full lips pursed in thought. “I never want to be like that woman…” she shook her head. “Like any of those people who come to see the aunts. If love makes you crazy like that…”

“But Darcy, that’s not love,” Wanda countered. “That’s just magic. What the aunts make those people feel…it’s not real.” A small smile played on her lips. “But this is different,” she added, a familiar dreamy lilt in her voice. “It’s different if you’re summoning _true_ love.”

“No,” Darcy shook her head. “I’m not.” She looked back over her shoulder and offered her sister a sad smile. “The guy I dreamed up doesn’t exist, Wanda. And if he doesn’t exist, I’ll never fall in love…and I’ll never die of a broken heart.”

Wanda wanted to tell her sister she was wrong. That love was more than just the pain and loss they knew firsthand. She wanted to tell her that love could be wonderful—that it could be strong enough to break the curse. But before she could open her mouth, Darcy had lifted the bowl of flowers to the moon. She watched with glittering eyes as the petals began to swirl upward out of the bowl and toward the starless night. The wind caught them and carried them away as the night whispered Darcy’s spell back to them.

_And if he doesn’t exist…I’ll never die of a broken heart._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rules and exceptions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love, my kittens! You make everything so much more fun with your kind words.

There were rules inside the Owens house too. But instead of curfews and chores like other houses, the rules that governed the Owens women and their nieces were in place to protect them and control the raw power each woman had coursing in her veins.

1) Never cast a spell with the intention to harm another person

2) Expect what you do with magic—good or bad—to be returned three-fold

3) Only what magic has done can magic undo

4) All magic comes with a price

By the time she was seventeen, Darcy knew these rules backwards and forwards. They guided her hands and intentions whenever she opened a spell book or reached for ingredients to create a charm or tincture for a midnight knock at the kitchen door. In the eight years she’d lived at Cordelia Street, Darcy’s abilities had blossomed like the pink peonies by the front porch. With Jane away at college and then medical school on the mainland and Natasha off wandering around Europe, Darcy had taken to helping the aunts with more than just their soap-making business. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter that she didn’t have any friends, that she was purposefully excluded from just about everything, that she didn’t have anyone outside her own house to talk to. None of that mattered because she was strong, she told herself on extra lonely days. She was powerful. She could do things no one else could. And she knew the aunts were proud of her. 

She wanted to share this power with Wanda, but it seemed like Wanda was never home long enough to talk to anymore.

As Aunt May had predicted, Wanda’s power had taken its time to arrive and revealed itself when she’d turned fifteen. She’d always been pretty, but suddenly it was like a light was glowing beneath her skin. Her eyes sparkled and her hair fell thick and healthy in shiny waves around her face. She drew attention everywhere they went—looks of desire or envy followed her when she went to town. She sailed through her classes as the teachers found themselves too entranced to notice if she’d actually done her homework or taken her exams. By the summer of her sixteenth birthday rolled around, she’d started moving things with her mind. The space between her fingers crackled with ruby red sparks that could manipulate the electricity in any room and more than once, she’d placed a hand on Darcy’s head and drawn out a nightmare so she could sleep.

Wanda’s magic was beautiful and unpredictable. It drew things to her without effort—especially men. It was almost comical to watch them tripping over themselves to catch her eye at the park or post office. The way they lined up for hours at the Saturday market to buy a bar of soap from her, threw rocks at her window at night, crossed the street without looking for the chance to talk to her.

Another teenaged girl might have been jealous of her sister, but not Darcy. When she was with Wanda, she might as well have been invisible. It was a relief. She didn’t like the looks she got when she was by herself. The way men would leer at her. The way their wives would roll their eyes and huff away like she’d done something on purpose.

“You can cover up all you want,” May had said with a shake of her head as she watched her great-niece pull on a sweater that hid her curves and hung down past her hips. “But there’s a reason Owens women don’t have many female friends—everyone’s always worried we’re going to steal their men away from them.” She clucked her tongue as she came up behind Darcy to study both of their reflections in the mirror. “As if you could steal someone who didn’t want to be stolen.”

Darcy felt a burst of impatience and resentment. Not for Aunt May—but for the things she was saying. The truth behind her words. “Well they don’t have to worry about me,” she muttered. “I don’t want any of their men. I just want to be left alone.”

May’s fingers combed through her dark curly hair and her lips dipped into a soft frown. “It’s not all heartbreak and misery, you know,” she said quietly.

She rolled her eyes and reached for her bag. “Do we need anything other than the usual stuff from the store?”

“No, sweetheart,” May said and put a hand to Darcy’s face before she drew her close to press her lips to her cheek with more tenderness than usual.

Autumn had come to the island early that year and Darcy found herself half-wishing she’d brought a coat. But the other half was grateful for the wind that nipped her nose and cooled her flushed cheeks. It made it easier to think. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to experience all the good things about love and romance—the stuff from the fairy tales that supposedly turned your knees to jelly and warmed you from the inside. And it wasn’t that she’d cut herself off entirely—there had been a handful of times that she’d given in to curiosity and let a boy from school take her out in his car or sneak off behind the bleachers. Letting them kiss her, run their hands over her body while they pressed impatiently against her. It had felt good, she had to admit. Giving into the curious, hungry animal of her body had felt good. But it hadn’t felt right. These boys filled her with waves of lust that overpowered her sense and put a sharp taste of salt and sweat at the back of her mouth.

But when Wanda came home lately, with that same lust still clinging to her clothes like cigarette smoke, Darcy bit her tongue. She didn’t know what she’d say to her sister who was trying so hard to enjoy the gifts they’d been given. Who didn’t seem to be worried about their cursed legacy, and who just delighted in the magic she could conjure with her own hands. Darcy didn’t want to bring up that beneath that giddy, lusty energy Wanda was bringing home with her, she could still sense what she’d come to think of as Wanda’s signature. Bittersweet longing—a desire to be cared for, to be loved and treasured and safe. It had rooted itself deep within her when their parents had been taken from them and Darcy knew that on some level, she’d been looking for it her whole life.

So, Darcy didn’t say anything about how Wanda spent her time. If this was how she went looking for something to quell that hunger, then Darcy couldn’t begrudge her that. It wasn’t Wanda’s fault that she still believed in a love strong enough to break their curse.

_Two Years Later_

The duffle Wanda had packed was almost heavier than she was. She wobbled beneath the weight of it as she made her way across the bedroom to the open window. Darcy couldn’t help but smile as she watched her stuff the bag between the panes and heard it hit its target with a heavy thud.

Jake Dorman’s pickup was waiting for them at the end of the driveway and Jake himself was standing beneath the window, waiting for Wanda to follow her bag and jump into his waiting arms. Darcy glanced down at him, staring up at the house like a puppy waiting to be called back in for a meal. She shook her head. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. “I mean, do you really love him? Enough to run away with him?”

Wanda stopped her last-minute fussing and moved her shoulder in a shrug. “What’s enough, Darce?” she asked, keeping her voice just above a whisper. “You know how much I hate it here. How hard it is to live here.” She reached out a hand for her sister. Darcy felt a brief spark from Wanda’s fingers closing around hers. “Why don’t you come with us?”

She scoffed. “What, third-wheel-it with the two of you? Sounds like fun.”

“You wouldn’t be a third-wheel—”

“Wanda, come on,” Darcy cut her off.

She pulled on their hands. “You come on.”

Darcy shook her head. “I can’t,” she said automatically. “The aunts…”

“They’ll get along fine without you,” Wanda insisted. “And Natasha’ll be back eventually. You don’t have to live like this. We can go…” she glanced back to the window again. “I want to go where no one’s ever heard of us.”

“And you should,” Darcy insisted, though it twisted her heart to say it out loud. “If you really want to go then you should.” She squeezed her hands and swallowed hard. “I just…feel like I’m never going to see you again,” she admitted with a soft laugh.

Wanda’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? Of course you’re going to see me again!” She laughed lightly and ducked her head to catch Darcy’s eye. “We’re gonna grow old together…you and me in this big old house,” she squeezed her hands again. “Two old biddies with all these cats?” Darcy laugh was wet with the tears she was trying to keep at bay. “I bet we even die on the same day like the aunts are always saying they’re going to.”

Darcy looked up. “Promise?”

An idea sparkled in Wanda’s eye and she ran back to the bed to rummage through her purse. When she returned it was with a pearl-handled switchblade that she popped open. “Give me your hand,” she demanded.

“What are you doing—ow!” Darcy recoiled as Wanda pressed the knife into the soft flesh of her palm.

“Your blood,” she said carefully before she drew the blade across her own palm. “My blood,” she said when a thick line of blood appeared. She took her hand and pressed it to Darcy’s. “Our blood,” she finished. Her skin felt sticky and warm beneath Darcy’s as they laced their fingers together. Wisps of crimson energy swirled around their joined hands like smoke and crackled with red sparks. “Nothing’s stronger than this,” Wanda said solemnly.

Darcy nodded and swallowed down her tears. “Nothing’s stronger than this,” she whispered in response.

And then Wanda was throwing her arms around her and kissing her cheeks. And then she was shimmying down the trellis and into Jake’s embrace. And then Darcy was alone for the first time since she was a year old.

The silence Wanda left was deafening. Darcy laid awake all night, staring at the cut on her hand that had already healed by the time Wanda’s feet had hit the ground. Wishing she could let all of this go as easily as her sister. Wishing she was brave enough to chase after a different life. Wishing so many things could be different.

But most of all wishing that she didn’t have to be alone.

_Five Years After That_

Life was better when Jane and Natasha were both living at home again. By the time Darcy turned twenty-three, both of her cousins had returned to Cordelia Street. Jane, to open an herbal medicine clinic—the first on the island, and Natasha, having had enough of traveling for a while, to resume making soap and spells with May and Pepper.

“What’s wrong?” Darcy asked as Nat returned from front lawn with a stack of envelopes in her hand.

“Mrs. Croslin just gave me the evil eye,” she said, shaking her head.

Darcy mirrored her cousin as she gripped the pestle harder to produce a finer powered root. “Better break out your counter-curses,” she commented dryly. “Was she spraying the street with Lysol again?”

With a grin, Natasha tossed the mail on the table. “No, she was putting lawn chairs on the sidewalk outside her house.”

Darcy nodded. “Saving parking spaces for her children that are coming to visit next weekend.”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” Nat muttered in amusement.

She laughed and set down the mortar as the kettle began whistling from the other side of the kitchen. “Can you grab that?”

“Garden?” Nat asked pouring the hot water into a chipped teapot.

Darcy nodded again and picked up the mail as she followed the redhead through the house and out to the backyard where Jane was sitting with the aunts, chewing thoughtfully on a walnut brownie and working on a star chart. Natasha poured the tea as Darcy flopped into one of the old wicker chairs and draped her feet over the arm.

She flipped aimlessly through the envelopes, letters from the aunts’ legion of eccentric friends, a notice about a town hall meeting where something related to the Owens’ family would no doubt be on the agenda, bills that would be ignored, and toward the bottom, a colorful postcard with the word _Orlando_ splashed across the front and familiar handwriting scrawled across the back.

“Wanda’s in Orlando?” Pepper asked when Darcy picked it up to read her sister’s latest update. “What is she doing in Orlando?”

“I guess that Orkin man in Texas is a thing of the past?” Jane asked, not looking up from her charts.

Darcy tossed the postcard to the center of the table, narrowly missing it landing in the butter. “According to that he is,” she shook her head. “I don’t understand how she can keep going through all these guys.”

Every time she heard from Wanda, her heart twisted with worry a little more. Her sister’s tone was light, her words almost careless as she described what new city and new beau she was entertaining that month. But Darcy couldn’t help but feel that urge to check on her. To make sure she was okay. Hoping that someone was taking care of Wanda’s messy and delicate heart.

“It’s only a matter of time before she finds a guy who goes through her,” May commented, picking up the postcard. She looked up from reading and regarded her youngest niece. “Why the long face?”

Darcy shrugged and let her head fall back against the chair. “I don’t know. Maybe I should have gone with her.” It wasn’t the first time since Wanda had left that she’d wondered that. “It’s not like I’m doing anything important here—and at least she’s sounds like she’s having fun.”

Her aunts exchanged a glance. “You could have fun, Darcy,” Pepper reminded gently. “No one is keeping you chained up in this house.”

“I know that,” Darcy said, keeping herself from snapping. “I just…” her feet kicked uselessly. “I don’t know. It seems difficult to find someone to have fun with, in a town where everyone looks at you like you might turn them into a frog.” She frowned. “Just makes me wish we were…” she paused and debated going on before she sighed. “Normal.”

A chorus of groans burst from the table. “Normal?” Natasha asked with a look like she’d sucked on a lemon.

“Why would you want that?” Jane added with a light laugh. “Normal people are so boring.”

“They’re not boring, they’re happy,” Darcy countered.

“Oh, that’s what they want you to think,” May scoffed, waving her hand in Darcy’s direction.

“Sweetheart,” Pepper rested her hand on Darcy’s. “There’s nothing special about being normal—in fact, all it really indicates is a lack of courage.”

“Well it doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world to me,” Darcy said simply. “Maybe I’d get bored with it if I ever had the chance to try it.”

The bell above the back door jingled cheerfully and Darcy glanced at it over her shoulder. “Are we expecting someone?”

Another look between her aunts. “Just a delivery?” May said, shrugging her shoulders. “I think?”

Pepper nodded. “Would you mind signing for it?” she asked sweetly.

Darcy narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the two of them and got to her feet. “Sure…”

She walked through the house again, taking the most direct route to the front gate where a delivery man was waiting with a box and a clipboard. He turned around just as she was coming down the front steps and stopped her in her tracks.

Darcy felt her heart stutter when his eyes met hers. Kind green eyes beneath a mop of brown curly hair. There was a spark of something there—something she couldn’t put her finger on. She forced her feet to unglue from the bottom step and approach the fence.

“Are you…” he squinted at the name of on the box. “May Owens?”

“Uh—” Darcy coughed and blinked. “No,” she shook her head. “I’m not.”

He nodded and waited a moment before a half-smile lifted the corner of his lips. “Is that…” he smiled. “Is that like a nickname? Not? Short for Not…ia?”

Darcy felt herself blush as an unexpected giggle escaped her lips. “No,” she shook her head again. “I’m…um. Darcy,” she said, as if she’d only just remembered. “Darcy Owens.” She tilted her head in confusion. “Do you not…” she frowned. “Don’t you know who my Aunt May is?”

He glanced around. “Should I?” he asked uncertainly. “I just…I’m not from around here.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “I can—uh—I can sign for that,” she said, remembering that there was a reason he’d come to the gate and it wasn’t to make her stumble over her own name and forget how to draw a breath.

He handed over the clipboard with the pen attached. She scrawled her name on the line and handed it back. He looked down at her signature and smiled. “Okay then, Darcy Owens,” he said with a small smile that dimpled his cheek. “I’m Peter.” She nodded and watched, amused, as he turned to leave again.

She cleared her throat. “Peter?”

He spun back around quickly. “Yeah?”

Darcy pointed to the box still under his arm. “Can I have that?”

“Oh,” he offered it to her with the tops of his ears turning red. “Sorry.”

When he passed the box over the fence, Darcy’s fingers brushed his and she nearly dropped it at the bolt of electricity that shot through her. An unfamiliar wave flooded her senses—something sweet and warm that hinted at belonging. Something good. And safe. And—

She stepped back and offered a brief, nervous smile. “Thanks.”

Peter nodded and blinked, looking dazed. “Yeah,” he said. “Anytime.”

Darcy made herself turn away and walk back into the house, ignoring the tug she felt in her stomach. The one that was telling her to go after him. To throw her arms around him and follow the lead of the hungry curiosity that his touch had just awakened.

“Are you okay?” Jane asked as she walked back to the garden.

“Uh-huh,” she said, setting the box on the already crowded table. Her head felt fuzzy—not as clear as she usually felt. “Fine.”

“Are you sure, sweetheart?” Pepper asked. If Darcy had been paying attention, she might have caught the hint of a smile on her aunt’s face.

“Uh-huh,” she heard herself repeat before she turned around. “I just um…” she pointed to the direction in which she’d just come. “I think I forgot—”

“It’s okay, Darcy,” May said cheerfully. “You go back inside.”

She nodded, unable to shake herself from the daze that had stunned her a moment ago. “I’ll be right back.”

Her feet had a mind of their own as they led her back through the house. It was a good thing, though, because Darcy wasn’t sure her mind was up to controlling the rest of her body. She’d stumbled down the front steps and was looking down, fumbling with the latch and about to unlock the front gate when a large hand reached over the fence to cover hers.

When she looked up, Peter’s shy smile was waiting for her. “Hi,” she breathed and before she could say another word, he took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers.

All the noise in Darcy’s head quieted, that fuzzy haze softened as she leaned into him and let the feelings overwhelm her.

_Safe,_ everything inside her whispered.

_Warm._

_Good._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein everything and nothing is fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance that this is a very short chapter (although the other have been too, I guess) but this particular moment really needed its own breathing space so there you go. Also, if you're familiar with the movie, you will notice a deviation, but just because I like the more frightening element presented in the books where the curse can take anyone you love, not just menfolk. 
> 
> It's about to get a bit angsty, just a heads up. :-*

The aunts kept their word and died on the same day, though Pepper died first. She went to sleep on Sunday night and did not wake up. Across the sound, Darcy awoke in the middle of the night, cold and alert. She threw off the covers and bit back a hiss when her feet touched the icy hardwoods floor. From the edge of the bed, she grabbed Peter’s worn sweatshirt and pulled it on over her t-shirt.

He was still sound asleep in bed with Morgan sleeping fitfully beside him. Her one arm thrown across his face, one chubby leg curled around his arm. Darcy checked them both carefully. Nothing wrong there, she decided of her husband and four-year-old. In the next room, five-year-old Cassie was just as asleep, her long brown hair a mess that Darcy was already dreading having to run a brush through in the morning.

She crept downstairs and into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. As the kettle began to boil, Darcy went to the phone and paused for a moment before she picked it up.

“Darcy?” Jane was waiting for her on the other end of the line. Her voice was tight, stuffed with tears that Darcy knew she wasn’t crying.

Her heart sank as she dropped into a kitchen chair. “Pepper?”

“Can you come home?”

“Of course,” she said immediately. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

But May could not wait for her to arrive. By the time Darcy set foot back on the island, May had slipped away as well, and she was finding it difficult to breathe around the hole that had opened inside her heart.

Jane and Natasha were in the kitchen when she arrived. The loss was palpable. For three women who had lost so very much in their young lives, there was a new, frightening untethered element to this grief. The aunts had always seemed immortal. The same age forever. Constant guardians and meddlers. Always there to run the house and dole out advice and magical cures.

Everywhere she looked another memory was waiting to greet her. Pepper sorting and drying herbs. May teaching her how to bless an amulet for protection. The two of them swapping loving barbs over turnovers and brownies. All the hours she’d spent with her sister and cousins wrapping bars of soap to sell at the market. The way the air always felt thick with sweet, familiar love and crackled with magic and unpredictability.

“Where’s Wanda?” Darcy asked after they’d sat in silence, making tea no one would drink, shuffling the clutter around the kitchen for what felt like days, but what must have only been a few hours. “Did you call her?”

Natasha nodded. “She’s in Sedona,” she said softly. “She’ll be back for the funeral.”

“Sedona,” Darcy repeated, running her fingertip along the rim of her teacup. “I thought she was in San Francisco?”

A thick, red curl fell into Natasha’s face as she shook her head. “Not anymore.”

Darcy hummed, wondering if she’d missed that in Wanda’s last letter. “New guy?”

Jane shrugged. “Probably.”

Another infinite silence passed before Darcy forced herself to ask the question that had plagued her since she’d picked up the phone. “Did you hear knocking?”

Natasha shared a look with her sister and set her teacup down. Her lips dipped into a thoughtful frown before she shook her head. “This wasn’t the curse, Darcy,” she said quietly. “This was just…”

Darcy pursed her lips and stared down at the honey swirling her tea. “Life?”

She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. If it was a curse that took the one you loved, there was someone to blame. An ancestor to rail against. A target for all the hurt and anger that came roaring to life when death paid a visit.

But if it was just life…if life could be just as unfair and cruel as a centuries-old curse…

She stopped herself from finishing that thought. She drank her tea and she wished that Wanda was there.

They buried the aunts side-by-side in the Owens corner of the cemetery. Beside their parents and a brother that none of their remaining family had ever met. There was no crowd or service. Just the remaining residents of the house on Cordelia Street, Darcy and her family, and Wanda, who had arrived early in the morning and carrying with her a new kind of energy her sister could not put her finger on.

The four of them sat in the garden later while Peter chased the girls around the spacious back yard. Wanda looked up at the house and squinted in the late spring sunshine. “This house feels all wrong without them,” she admitted.

Her skin was darker from living in constant sunshine. Her voice had a throaty quality that Darcy had to guess was caused by the cigarette she had balanced between her long fingers. Her hair was longer, lighter than she’d ever seen it. Almost blonde. If Darcy hadn’t been able to sense her a mile away, she might not have recognized her.

“Just quieter,” Jane said, following Wanda’s gaze to the window that used to be their bedroom.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Natasha said, and when Darcy looked up, she found her cousin looking between her and Wanda. “You could come home.”

“And do what?” Wanda asked, dropping her thin arms onto the table. “Have stones thrown and people hissing at us in the grocery store?” She looked at Darcy for backup. “Is that what you want for your girls?”

“Of course not,” Darcy said mildly, just as Jane shook her head and said, “It’s not like that anymore.”

“People have hated us for four hundred years,” Wanda reminded. “You’re not going to convince me that’s changed in a single decade.”

“I’ll come visit more,” Darcy said, steering the conversation away from the potential for an argument. “Peter and I—we’ll bring the girls to see you.” She smiled. “You’re _their_ aunts, after all.”

Jane smiled as Morgan arrived, breathless and red-faced at the table. “Aunt Jane,” she asked politely. “Can you show me the yellascope?”

“It’s _telescope,_ baby,” Darcy reminded gently as Jane pulled her youngest daughter into her lap and wrapped her arms tightly around her.

“That’s what I said,” Morgan insisted.

Jane stood and swung Morgan up onto her hip easily. “I would _love_ to show you the yellascope,” she said and pressed a kiss that turned into a raspberry onto her chubby cheek. “Let’s go.”

Natasha got up not long after when the phone began ringing inside the house, leaving Darcy and Wanda alone at the table. “How long are you staying?” Darcy asked when Wanda reached for a honey-lavender scone.

“I’m going back tomorrow.”

Her heart sank with the unexpected realization that she’d been hoping she could convince her to stay longer. “You could come back with us,” she said with a nod toward the sound. “Stay a few days.”

But Wanda shook her head. “I need to get back.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes and studied her sister. “What is it?” she asked finally. “What’s waiting for you there?”

Wanda bit her lip and looked down. “I don’t want to jinx it,” she said with a guilty little laugh.

“Jinx what?” Darcy raised her eyebrows.

But Wanda only reached out and clasped her hand with Darcy’s. She pressed their scarred palms together and Darcy felt a jolt of Wanda’s familiar, crimson energy pass through her skin before her sister turned their hands and pressed a kiss to the back of Darcy’s hand. “Just let me do this,” she said cryptically. “For you.”

“Do what?” Darcy asked with a laugh.

But before Wanda could decide if she wanted to answer, Cassie appeared at her side and pulled her to her feet. Darcy watched, a smile still on her face as Wanda followed Cassie over to the rope swing and helped her climb in to push her higher than she could propel herself. A moment later, Peter dropped down into Wanda’s empty seat and shot her a smile. “Everything okay?” he asked, reaching automatically for her hand.

She nodded. “Everything’s fine.”

It was fine; better than fine, she decided, remembering the letter she’d written to Wanda on their fifth anniversary. _Blissfully, perfectly, normal,_ she’d said. Everything she’d ever wanted out of her life. A husband who loved her and made her laugh every day, two beautiful daughters she loved more than she ever thought possible. A home in a town where no one thought she was to blame for everything that went wrong. No cabinets full of strange ingredients or desperate women drumming their fingernails against her back door at night.

And it stayed that way—that blissful, perfect, normal—for eighteen months and six days longer.

Until the morning that Darcy’s world was shattered with the sound of three crisp knocks on the wall above her bed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fallout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some angst that we all knew was coming, but was no less difficult to put my sweet Darcy through. This is the chapter that I think probably borrows the most from the movie, heads up. 
> 
> Have I mentioned that I love you? Because I love you.

She didn’t even remember getting to the island. In the middle of the night, barefoot, wild-eyed and with her hair a mess, a sweater thrown over her nightgown. There were always at least a few lights on at the house and the door opened for her without resistance.

Downstairs was empty. The house was as quiet as her own now. With Cassie and Morgan staying with a neighbor while their mother was supposed to be handling the details of their father’s funeral, the silence was thick and suffocating. A reminder with every heartbeat that the man who’d breathed all the light and humor into their home—into Darcy’s life—was gone.

The idea had struck her when she’d laid down that night to try to sleep. A memory she’d buried from so long ago it might as well have been someone else’s. She moved like a woman possessed through the maze of rooms downstairs and into the kitchen.

“Darcy—” Jane appeared in the doorway behind her as she reached for the book. When she turned around, she saw how bad she must have looked in the way Jane’s eyes softened immediately. “What are you—”

“It was the curse, wasn’t it?” she demanded as Natasha came up behind Jane and ducked into the kitchen to stand closer to her. “Peter—” her voice broke around his name, the ache in her heart so strong she thought it might stop beating right then. “Did I do this?” she asked, as her eyes filled with tears again. “Did he die because I loved him so much?”

Jane pursed her lips and Darcy watched in surprise as her eyes grew glassy for a moment before she blinked her tears away. “I’m so sorry,” she said finally.

“We didn’t think…” Natasha said and stopped herself before she looked down at the well-loved table. “When May said—”

“We should have told them not to do it,” Jane said firmly. “But none of us thought…when they cast the spell…”

Darcy felt her breath vanish from her lungs. She leaned heavier on the hands she’d slammed on the table. “What spell?” she demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“It was just supposed to be a push in the right direction,” Natasha raised her eyes finally.

“You know how the aunts loved to meddle—” Jane shook her head. “We should have stopped them but you—”

“You just wanted something normal,” Natasha reminded in a strained voice. “We all just wanted you to be happy.”

“Oh God,” Darcy breathed. Her knees weakened and her head started to spin. “No. Please,” she begged. “Please tell me they didn’t…please…”

“It was only meant to be temporary,” Natasha reached a hand for Darcy’s shoulder but thought better of it. “Just a sweet and harmless little—"

“We couldn’t have known,” Jane interrupted weakly. “They would never have done it if they’d known you would really love him.”

“Well, I _did,_ ” she said, her voice hoarse from all the crying she’d done in the last twenty-four hours. “I _did._ And I want him _back._ ”

“Darcy—” Natasha warned when she turned back to the shelf above the stove and retrieved the ancient spell book.

“ _No,_ ” Darcy snapped as she flung the cover open and began feverishly flipping pages. “You two let them do this—you let them mess with my life like this—you let them bring him into my life so you two can bring him back.”

“Darcy,” Jane’s tone was firmer, but not enough to stop her flipping pages. “You know we won’t do that.”

“We _don’t_ do that,” Natasha added.

“But we _can_ ,” Darcy insisted. “We _can_ do that. I saw the spell. I know it’s here. I saw it—I saw it when Mommy and Daddy died—” Finally, her fingers landed on a thick sheaf of papyrus and she folded it out to reveal the full list of complex ingredients and steps. “Please,” she begged, the desperation clawing deep and raw up her throat. “I have done _everything_ that has been asked of me,” she reminded. “And I’ve never asked either of you for anything. Have I? I’ve never asked you for help or for spells or _anything_ ,” her eyes filled with tears again. “But _please,_ ” she begged. “Please I am asking you for this. Please bring him back?” She looked from Jane to Natasha and back again. “Please?”

Natasha reached her first and gently held her face in her hands. “Darcy,” she said in a thick whisper. “Even if we _did_ bring him back,” her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “You know it wouldn’t be Peter.”

“It would be something dark,” Jane added, taking a tentative step toward them. “Something unnatural.”

It took the two of them folding their arms around her for the dam of sorrow to burst in her chest. She let them pull her away from the book, from her last hope of getting her life back, and into the living room where they sat together on the worn sofa and let her cover them both in tears.

***

Cassie and Morgan held hands as they walked in front of Darcy up to the front gate. “This isn’t forever,” she’d told them the night before when they’d packed their suitcases. “We’re just going to be staying a little while, so all the rules are the same, okay? No chocolate for breakfast, you’re going to do your homework and keep up in school and teeth and hair always brushed before bed. Understand?”

They’d nodded solemnly and finished packing the bags they carried with them through the gate and up the front steps. Darcy stopped and fixed her eyes on both Jane and Natasha, waiting to follow them inside. “And you two,” she shook her head, forcing down the hurt, the anger that had taken up residence in her heart. “Those girls will never do magic,” she said firmly. “Ever.”

To her relief neither woman had the heart to try to convince her otherwise as they helped her inside, carrying her suitcase up to the bedroom at the top of the stairs like they had when she’d first arrived. Darcy climbed the stairs slowly, her heart sinking lower with each step, moving farther and farther from the life for which she thought she’d worked so hard. From all the normal she’d so desperately clung to. From all the happiness she’d had.

Natasha set her suitcase at the foot of her old bed and said something about getting the girls settled in their own rooms. Darcy waited until she and Jane had both left before she kicked off her shoes and climbed beneath the covers.

And she stayed there for ten days.

***

Wanda woke up sick. Heartsick and heavy and full of sadness that wasn’t hers but was still somehow hers to share. She’d felt like this for weeks—weighed down with sorrow and a deep twist in her chest. Her hand was aching, the worn scar on her palm pulsed with a low hum she could feel when she pressed her fingers to it. She held it up and studied it in the dim light.

 _Nothing is stronger than this,_ she heard Darcy whisper. Clear enough that she could be laying right beside her. But only Brock was beside her, asleep and unaware of the way her heart had become tangled with her sister’s. Blissful ignorance that she envied when her hand throbbed again. He stirred and reached for her, a soft sound escaping his lips.

She slipped from bed fast enough to let his arm land on her flattened pillow. “C’mback” he muttered, not opening his eyes. Wanda winced. Not as asleep as she’d hoped.

Her knee pressed into the mattress as she leaned over and brushed her lips to his ear. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered and picked up the half-empty bottle of tequila from his side of the bed.

The moon was bright enough that she didn’t need a light in the bathroom. She dug into her bag and retrieved the little vial of dried nightshade Natasha had sent a month ago. The cap to the tequila unscrewed easily and with one little flick of her wrist, a single dose floated down onto the amber liquid. Wanda trained her eyes on the alcohol and created a little whirlpool until the evidence of her interference dissolved entirely. She capped it again and smiled to herself. He’d sleep deeper this time.

She set the bottle back where it had been, right where he’d reach for it to chase away his hangover in the morning and slid her fingers into his thick dark hair. Cool red smoke spilled from her palm and sank into his skin—insurance that he wouldn’t notice she was gone. She slipped out of the house without a sound to chase the sunrise up the highway as she headed east.

***

From beneath the nest she built for herself of covers and pillows, Darcy heard familiar heavy footsteps on the stairs outside her bedroom. The door creaked open slowly and the footsteps, clumsy and close together, crept closer to her bed.

“Mommy?” Cassie asked cautiously from the middle of the room. Darcy smiled at the sound of her voice, but could not bring herself to respond. Cassie was undeterred. “Mooommmy,” she drew out the word and took another few steps closer. The bottom corner of the comforter lifted and Cassie’s sheet of dark hair appeared as she ducked her head to one side. “Are you even in here?”

It'd be easy, Darcy told herself, to just push the covers off her face and let Cassie pull her to her feet. She could take a shower. Brush her hair. Do something more than lay here, surprised by the way her heart kept beating and her lungs kept working despite how everything inside of her wanted it all to stop.

But she didn’t move. She listened to Cassie walk over to the side of the bed where she’d been sleeping. “Mom,” she said seriously, sounding much older than seven. “I’m worried about Morgan.” For a moment, Darcy’s stomach clenched and she felt her heart jump into her throat. “Did you know that she’s been smoking Aunt Nat’s herbal cigarettes and drinking whiskey?” Darcy felt herself relax and bit back a smile as Cassie continued. “She puts on these wolf ears and howls at the moon and runs around town biting people?” A pause. “Naked?!”

She snorted and shook her head at her daughter’s imagination.

On the other side of the covers, Cassie sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you know when someone calls the cops—”

Before she could get up, Darcy reached out an arm and yanked her into bed to snuggle against her. She breathed deep and held the scent of lavender shampoo bars and almond soap that had always filled the bathrooms when she’d been growing up. “I’m sorry, baby girl,” she said quietly, her lips against Cassie’s hair. “I’m just so tired.”

“I know,” Cassie said, folding her arms across Darcy’s and giving her a squeeze. “It’s okay.” They lay there quietly for a long moment before she heard her smile. “Morgan’s not really smoking.”

Darcy grinned. “What about the rest of it?”

But Cassie only snickered, prompting her mother to tickle her until her silly, hiccuping belly laughs echoed off the pitched roof and fell like flower petals around the room.

***

Wanda climbed into bed beside Darcy and mirrored the way she was curled up. Her sister’s hair was a tangled forest of curls and neglect. She smelled like the bed sheets. Stale. Salty and sweaty and worn. Wanda drew a black polished fingernail between Darcy’s eyebrows and tapped gently. “Wake up, sleepy head,” she whispered and scooched further in, so their knees were touching.

Darcy woke slowly, her long eyelashes fluttering with a grace mismatched to her disheveled state. She blinked and when their gaze met, Wanda thought she might shatter with the pain that flooded her body. Darcy’s eyes filled with tears. “I was really, really happy,” she whispered before she crumpled in her grief again. Wanda’s arms went around her and pulled her in, _shh_ ing comfort into her hair until this wave of tears had run its course.

“I just keep thinking about what you said once,” Darcy said later, her head on her sister’s lap, when she’d caught her breath and Wanda rested her back against the headboard. Her long fingers combed through Darcy’s hair, untangling the mess she found there.

“When was this?”

“When I said I never wanted to fall in love,” Darcy reminded. “Because I didn’t want to be like those women at the back door.”

Wanda tilted her head to one side, trying to remember more than the image of Darcy in the moonlight, a bowl of flowers offered to the moon, a sweet and simple spell hanging in the air. “What did I say?”

“That it wasn’t love,” she said softly. “It was just magic. It wasn’t real—what the aunts did.”

“Darcy…”

“What if you were right?”

“I wasn’t,” Wanda said firmly. “Not about you and Peter.”

Darcy was quiet for long enough that Wanda was just starting to think she’d fallen back to sleep. “I’m not sure which would be worse,” she said finally. Wanda’s fingers stilled in her hair as she waited for her to go on. “Either it was just a spell, like all the others, and that means that everything we had—everything I thought I felt—wasn’t real…”

“Or…?”

“Or it only started out as a spell, but I loved him enough that I made it real,” Darcy said softly. “And he died because of the curse.” She paused. “Because of me.”

***

The clock only read half-past two when Wanda sprawled herself across the hardwood floor and let her bare feet rest on the wall. It had taken a few hours, but Darcy had started to smile again. They’d fallen quickly back into their rhythm of comfort and understanding, reading each other’s minds and feelings as easily as reading a favorite book. Darcy lay on her belly on the bed, her chin resting on the heel of her hand. “And what is it that makes this one so different from all the others?”

Wanda heard the way her laugh fell deeper and sounded almost guilty from the back of her throat. “He’s _nothing_ like the other ones,” she assured her.

They’d talked about Peter first—all the things Darcy want to remember out loud. Little things Wanda hadn’t known because she hadn’t known _him_ ; things Darcy wanted to share with her before they could be touched by the fire of time and memory. They’d talked about how Peter had wanted her to open her own botanical shop—a place to sell all the soaps and lotions and creams she made at home. He’d had a line on a supplier who had been all ready to ink the deal before the plans had changed. Wanda had listened to everything her sister needed to share; gobbled up the stories and details for a time Darcy might need a reminder.

And eventually the conversation had shifted to her. To what she was doing in the desert. Who she was doing it with.

“Brock Rumlow?” Darcy repeated his name skeptically. “He sounds like some kind of street fighter from a video game.”

Wanda laughed and shook her head, her hair falling into her eyes as she did. “I mean, I guess…I don’t know. He’s got a kind of…mob boss/cage fighter vibe to him—” Darcy snorted, and Wanda giggled and covered her face. “I don’t know, Darce. He’s just so _intense_.” When she looked up, it was to an expectant look, urging her to go on. “When I’m with him? It’s like time just…” she shrugged, “doesn’t mean anything. Like our relationship could span centuries and I wouldn’t even realize it.”

She could tell Darcy wasn’t buying it. She didn’t blame her—it was hard to explain the effect that Brock had on her. The way she’d felt pulled into his orbit from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. Her whole life, she’d been the one to draw people in. To have the tables turned and feel helpless in the face of someone else’s magnetism was frightening and intoxicating. A confusing pull of her will and his and never being sure which of them was really in control.

“Anyway,” she sighed and let her arms fall over her head, “it’s a good thing Natasha’s still growing belladonna, or I’d never get any sleep.”

Darcy grimaced. “You’re taking _that_ stuff? It’s really potent.”

Wanda laughed. “ _I’m_ not taking it,” she sat up. “I’m just slipping it to him every now and then when I need a night off.”

She watched her sister’s eyes widen. “You’re _drugging_ your boyfriend so he’ll let you sleep?” she repeated. “Oh, no that’s way better.”

“Your sarcasm is noted,” Wanda assured her with a wry smile.

“Just…be careful,” she said softly. “Please.”

“Come on, Darce, you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Wanda,” Darcy shook her head with a look somewhere between exasperation and affection. “Worrying about you was the first thing I ever learned how to do.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine. He’s…” she stopped and considered her words. She almost said that Brock was good. But that wasn’t true. Brock was solid and powerful and magnetic and just the right kind of crazy. But those weren’t things that Darcy wanted to hear. They weren’t things that would keep her from worrying. “He’s strong,” she looked up again and found Darcy’s gaze. “I think—” she stopped again. “I think he could…”

“He could what?” Darcy prompted when she trailed off.

“Survive the curse?” she finished softly. She heard the way her voice lifted with hope she barely wanted to acknowledge.

Darcy’s full lips pressed together and turned downward in a thoughtful frown. “He can’t, Wan,” she said softly. “No one can.”

But Wanda was already shaking her head. “You don’t _know_ that for sure—”

“It’s not a matter of strength,” Darcy argued lightly. “It’s not about _them_ at all. It’s about us.”

“Right,” she sat all the way up again. “We’re the ones who are cursed, so we’re the only ones who can break it. I think…” she paused again and bit her lip. “I think I can do it, Darce,” she said softly. “And I feel it…there’s something about Brock,” she admitted. “I think he’s the key.”

Somehow, the sad smile Darcy managed was even more heartbreaking than her tears. “I hope you’re right,” she said softly, after a long moment of silence had passed between them. “If you really do love him. Then I hope you’re right—for both of your sake.”

Wanda shifted on the floor and felt her heart twist for her sister again. “I just wish I’d met him sooner,” she said, just above a whisper. “I wish I could have broken the curse for you. For Peter.”

Darcy looked down and absently twirled the wedding ring she still wore. “I wish you could have too.”

***

The sky was just beginning to brighten, the true dawn still hours away, when Wanda crawled back into bed with Darcy. “Don’t be like Mom,” she said, reaching out to tuck one a dark, messy curl behind her sister’s ear. “Okay? You can't stay like this.”

Darcy took in a deep breath. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to just…what if I can't…” she trailed off and Wanda curled her hand at the back of her neck and pulled her down to kiss her forehead.

“You can,” she assured her. “Because you love Cassie and Morgan and you know they need their mother back,” she said firmly while still keeping her voice low. “They need you to get up and take a shower and shave your legs because I’m guessing your leg hair is so long I could _braid_ it—” she waited with a cheeky grin as Darcy giggled and kicked her from beneath her covers before she stroked her thumb over her cheek. “We all need you to come back, Darcy,” she said softly.

Darcy’s blue eyes sparkled with tears for another second before she blinked them away and nodded. “I know.” She sniffled and wound her arms around Wanda, pulling her in for a long hug. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Wanda said into her messy hair. “So much.” She thread her fingers through Darcy’s curls and let her palm touch the back of her head. Her hand tingled with a warm energy that glowed scarlet in the early morning light and she squeezed her eyes shut as her sister fell asleep in her arms. “A few more hours,” she said against her temple before she kissed her. “And then it’s time to come back to life.”

Wanda was gone with the last of the night. The sun rose pink and hopeful and streamed into the windows of the room at the top of the stairs.

And Darcy got out of bed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bad moon on the rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter where some lines and scenes and ideas are yanked right from the source material. Hope you enjoy!

Almost a year after Darcy returned to the island with her daughters, a brick and mortar establishment opened in town where she sold her blends of essential oils, bath salts, and shampoos.

The aunts’ special recipe charcoal soap was stacked high by the door, Natasha’s lust-inducing perfumes lined the shelf behind the register, and Jane’s herbal skin care and sensitive-scalp shampoo bars were sold alongside Darcy’s shea butter lotions and mashed banana face masks. 

It was a lovely place. Everyone said so—even as they whispered speculations about what kind of ingredients Darcy _really_ used to make her products so effective. 

The moon was still low when she finished her weekly phone call with her supplier near the end of August. It brushed the tops of the trees and glowed golden in the otherwise starless sky. She squinted at it through the living room window as she collected her notes and sales ledgers, hoping she didn’t see what she thought she’d seen. Hoping that ring had been a trick of the light or her tired eyes. 

“Who’s James _Buh-channon_ Barnes?” Cassie’s voice carried from the kitchen as Darcy made her way through the downstairs level of the house. 

“And why does he write letters in secret codes?” Morgan chimed in.

Darcy leaned in the doorway and watched her daughters hold an envelope and a letter between them, squinting at one and then the other. 

“It’s Buchanan,” Natasha said with a smile in her voice, glancing over from the stove. “And it’s not a secret code. It’s Russian.”

“Okay…” Cassie went on, undeterred. “So who’s James _Buchanan_ Barnes and why does he write letters in _Russian_?” 

“Because if he wanted two nosy little girls to read his letters,” Natasha abandoned her rose oil for a moment and gently took the letter and envelope from the girls, “he would have written them in English.”

“Do you know a spell to give someone chicken pox?” Cassie asked as Nat tucked the letter back into its envelope and put it into her back pocket.

“Nope,” Jane spoke up from across the table. She’d had her head buried in books all evening. “I know one that can cure it though.”

Morgan wrinkled her nose. “She wants to make Tucker Marsh stop calling us witches.”

Darcy’s stomach twisted, but Jane spoke up before she could say anything. “And you think that cursing him with chicken pox is the way to do that?”

Cassie shrugged. “I think it’d make him shut up for awhile, at least.”

Natasha snorted. “Sorry, kiddo. No curses here.”

“Then what kind of spells _do_ you know?” Cassie pressed.

“What kind of spells can Mommy do?” Morgan asked.

“Yeah,” Darcy could almost hear Cassie’s eyes light up. “What kind of magic did Mommy do when she was a little girl?”

“How come Mommy’s not magic anymore?”

“Your Mama’s still got plenty of magic,” Jane said, shaking her head with a little smile playing on her lips. “It's not like she's got the kind of gift you can return.”

Darcy cleared her throat and caught the way four pairs of eyes widened as they realized she’d joined them. “What’s going on in here?” she asked mildly, coming all the way into the kitchen to stand behind her girls. 

“Just making some tea,” Jane shrugged.  
Instantly, the kettle hissed with a loud whistle and burst of steam, startling everyone.

Darcy shot her cousin a look as she combed fingers through Cassie’s silky straight hair and let her nails scratch Morgan’s back through her nightgown. “Time for bed, girls,” she said, kissing one daughter and then the other. “Say goodnight, I’ll be up in a minute.” Without argument, they got down from their stools and gave Natasha and Jane each a hug and a kiss goodnight.

Darcy waited until they’d gone to their room before she cleared her throat a second time. “Just making tea?”

Natasha glanced over, an unreadable expression on her face. “And rose oil for that body butter we talked about this morning.”

She looked from one cousin to the other. “Just do me a favor and watch what you say to those girls,” she said evenly. “They hear enough garbage about this family from the kids at school. They don’t need to hear it from you too.”

Natasha shook her head, a familiar flash of defiance in her green eyes. “You know we’d never tell them anything but the truth. Lying to them won’t do anyone any favors.”

Darcy inhaled slowly and clenched her jaw. “I’m not asking you to lie,” she said evenly. “I’m asking you to keep the bullshit to a minimum.”

There was a heavy silence in the kitchen before Jane wet her lips thoughtfully and set down her pen. “Your resentment is becoming corrosive, Darcy,” she said making sure to look her cousin squarely in the eye. “It’s understandable,” she added. “But be careful.”

She gave a noncommittal hum and turned to follow her daughters up the stairs before Jane cleared her throat. Darcy hid the urge to roll her eyes as she turned back around. “What?”

“Have you heard from Wanda lately?” 

“No,” she shook her head. “I was going to write to her tonight and see if she’d think about coming home for Halloween. Maybe get her to stay until Thanksgiving,” she added with a shrug. “Why?”

Jane’s frown was thoughtful as she tapped the end of her pen against the open book in front of her. “Sooner might be better,” she said finally. “If you can get her to come back.”

Darcy’s brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

The smile Jane twitched in her direction was unconvincing. Almost nervous. “Probably nothing,” she said. “It’d just be nice to have everyone together again.”

But Darcy caught the way her cousin’s eyes darted to the window. And the full moon rising there. 

Her girls were both in bed by the time she reached their room. Cassie was already nearly asleep when she kissed her and pulled the covers up around her chin. On the other side of the room, Morgan was still shifting and wiggling around trying to get comfortable. Darcy seized the edge of her sheets and gave the blankets a shake. “Arms in or out, wiggle worm?”

Morgan raised her arms overhead. “Out.” 

Darcy tucked the sheets around her and sat on the edge of her bed to brush her hair out of her eyes. “Goodnight, baby girl,” she said softly, leaning down for a kiss. Morgan tilted her head to one side and studied her face, her eyes squinting as her lips pouted. “What’s wrong?”

To her surprise, her seven-year-old reached up and flattened her palm over Darcy’s chest. “Your heart, Mommy,” she said. “It sounds so sad.” 

Darcy’s mouth ran dry and she heard the start of a dozen questions croak together in the back of her throat. “Wh-what do you mean, Morgan?”

“I can hear it,” she said, as if it were obvious. 

“Hear it?” she repeated faintly.

“I can hear a lot of people,” she said before her eyes squinted in concentration. “If I do a real good listen.”

“What does it sound like?”

Morgan’s lips pursed and her expression folded in thought. “Like music, I think.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to say it. But I can always hear your heart the most,” she said, pulling her hand back slowly. “And it sounds like sad music.” She paused, thoughtfully. “I wish I could make it happy again.”

She could hardly breathe as she leaned down and kissed Morgan’s forehead. “You do, baby,” she promised, almost unable to hear her own words over the pounding in her ears. “You and your sister—all my heart needs to be happy.”

Morgan’s arms wrapped around her neck and she held her close. “I love you Mommy,” she whispered before she let her go.

Darcy echoed the words back and turned out the lights. There was no denying the moon now that it had climbed to its usual place in the sky. The dark red ring around it was enough to turn her stomach. _Blood on the moon, trouble looms_ , Aunt May was fond of saying. She made her way back to her own room and climbed into bed with a notebook and pen. Between the moon and Cassie’s questions about spells and what Morgan had just revealed about her own abilities, Darcy felt like she might explode. 

She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. _I can hear it_ , Morgan had said, the words rattling around inside Darcy’s head. _I can hear a lot of people_. She swallowed back a rush of panic that felt like bile rising in her throat.

 _Not Morgan_ , she thought selfishly. _Not my baby._

Of everything she’d hoped her daughters would inherit from her, she’d never wanted to pass on this. Let them be brilliant and able to read the stars as easily as a book, like Jane. Or radiate fierceness like a shield to protect the people they loved, like Natasha. Or sparkle with Wanda’s unpredictable kinetic energy. 

But not this. 

She didn’t want Morgan to grow up feeling everyone else’s feelings like she had. Having to learn how to wade through muddy marshes of the outrage and anxiety and impatience of others, learning how to recognize her own feelings over the din of the rest…it was exhausting. It had taken Darcy years to get a hold of it.

Maybe it would be better, more tolerable, to hear emotions like music instead of having to breathe them in like your own, choking and swallowing down the whole world’s thoughts and feelings and intentions so you could taste them on your tongue. But more than intrusive and exhausting, empathic abilities made for a lonely life. When you knew what everyone in the room was feeling, they couldn’t lie. And most people—normal people—preferred the company of those they could lie to.

She felt restless and caged and like there was something she needed to be doing, only no one had told her what. She got up and went to the window to open it, hoping a breeze would blow through and clear away the dense, cluttered air of her bedroom. But the air outside was just as thick and unmoving and Darcy felt no different as she picked up her pen and paper from the bed and sank down onto the window seat and began to write.

_It’s one of those nights, Wanda. One of those summer nights when the air in this room is so hot and so thick that every moment feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. When it’s just hard enough to breathe that you wish you didn’t have to. When all the losses stack against each other and I realize it’s the weight of that—of the hole that each one has dug deep inside my heart—that makes it hard to breathe._

_I miss you. Your beautiful messy energy and how you make every moment an adventure. I miss the way you being here distracts me from everything that’s wrong with my own life. That’s so selfish, but it’s the truth. And I haven’t been telling the truth enough lately. I tell everyone I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m surviving. But the truth is that I’m not fine. I’m not okay. I’m barely surviving. And every time I tell those lies, it feels like that hole in my heart gets a little deeper._

_There’s blood on the moon tonight. Aunt May’s favorite sign of trouble not far away. It brought a feeling in the air I don’t trust. Everything feels tense and anxious. Even the house feels like it’s waiting for something awful to happen. But how much more trouble could one family draw to itself? How much more can a heart break before it stops working? How much more do we have to lose before the curse decides we’ve all had enough and lets us be free to fall in love again?_

_Do I think it ever will? Do I think there’s another man out there somewhere who could find something to love in these broken pieces? With hands that want to make a mess of my hair and a heart strong enough to finally lay all this craziness rest? No, I don’t. I had what I had when I had it. I should be happy with that._

_It’s nice to dream sometimes. That our curse is just bad luck. That this house is just a house like any other. That the moon isn’t trying to warn us about anything._

_But those are more lies to tell myself to get through the day. Maria’s broken heart did curse us. And this house is much more than just a house. And a moon like that can only mean one thing._

Darcy didn’t sign her name, just folded her words and stuffed them into an envelope scribbled with Wanda’s last address.  
Any hope she had that her feeling of dread might dissipate once the moon was no longer glaring down at her faded when she awoken the next morning, her stomach still twisted.

It followed her to the post office, to the school to drop off the girls’ registration paperwork, and finally to the shop where it gnawed at the back of her mind all day. It didn’t stop until the sun had risen on another red morning and the phone rang and Darcy realized what she’d been waiting for. What the moon had been warning her about. 

Wanda.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important: TW for depictions of domestic violence (physical and psychological). If you'd rather not read that, I totally understand--you can probably skip this chapter and know exactly what happened when we get to the next. 
> 
> Love you, my sweet kitties <3

It was not the first time Darcy had dropped everything to rescue Wanda. She’d flown to Chicago in the middle of a snowstorm when she was nineteen to help Wanda pack and get her things out of the apartment of the married man she’d been sleeping with before his wife found out about their love nest. Driven down to Myrtle Beach at twenty-three to hold her sister’s hand while she took a pregnancy test and hold her hair back while she sobbed and threw up in relief when it turned out to be negative. One of the only times she and Peter had fought—really fought—was when she got in the car, no questions asked and seven months pregnant with Cassie, to drive to Columbus when Wanda had called her from the Franklin County jail.

Peter had told her she was being reckless and stupid and enabling all the worst things Wanda brought down on herself. And Darcy had agreed. And she’d gone anyway. Bailed Wanda out and convinced the man in question not to press charges. And Peter had stayed mad enough to sleep on the couch for three days after she got back.

Because that’s what they did. Wanda got in trouble and Darcy got her out. Wanda made a mess and Darcy cleaned it up. Wanda needed her, Darcy showed up. No matter what. Peter couldn’t understand the way these roles were etched into her bones; couldn’t understand how trying to do anything other than take care of her sister physically _hurt_ like a knife in the gut.

Darcy wasn’t thinking about Peter as she made her way north on I-41 from the Albuquerque Airport. She wasn’t thinking about anything except the fact that the goddamn moon was still full and red and angry and something was _very_ wrong. Logically, she told herself that yes, of course something was very wrong. That’s why she’d left her girls with Jane and Natasha—agreeing to let her cousins take them to the international pagan street fair in New York against her better judgement. She didn’t have time to argue and there was no chance of her bringing them with her. Not when she didn’t have the slightest idea in what state of distress she’d find her sister.

Her voice had sounded tight. Thick and wobbly enough that Darcy knew she was crying. “Can you come get me?” she’d asked as soon as Darcy had picked up the phone.

Yes. Of course. Always.

But she’d never felt like this when racing to her sister’s aid. While all she could hear in her memory was Wanda begging for help, all she felt like doing was turning around and going back home. Like she was driving through a thick bog of resistance, each mile fighting against an invisible force that was trying to drag her back. Her head was aching, her stomach in a knot that twisted tighter and tighter and by the time she reached the address she’d scribbled on the back of a utility bill, Darcy felt like she might vomit.

In the fog of confusion, the strangeness of feeling pulled in two completely different directions by the same person, Darcy hadn’t realized where Wanda had brought her. She stared at the address and double checked it with the envelope still clutched in her hand. It was a little bungalow, set back from the street with a black mailbox and a wide, bay window with curtains closed. Terracotta roof, bleached stone façade, stone walkway up to the door.

She frowned. She’d been expecting a cheap motel on the side of the road. A rent-by-the-hour place Wanda had ducked into while running away from whatever problem Darcy was going to have to help her solve. Not this cute little house on the edge of small desert town. Lights were on inside and there was a car in the driveway. Arizona plates. She stopped a few feet from her own car and cocked her head. Was that music? That didn’t fit with what she’d been expecting either.

And none of it fit with how she was feeling. No matter how quaint and charming this little house was, Darcy could not reconcile it with the urge to gag on everything still swirling inside of her. There was a weight in the air here that was nothing like the hot, humid summer she’d left back in New England. It was thicker. Uglier. There was a dull, metallic taste in the back of Darcy’s throat that only made it that much harder to keep walking toward the door.

She rang the doorbell once and waited as the music coming from inside was turned down. It was another moment and after the sound of a familiar voice rising and falling that Wanda opened the door, a large glass of red wine in her hand. “Oh my God, you made it!” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up with excitement. Darcy gaped, unable to speak for a moment as Wanda threw her free arm around her in a light, casual hug. “Good,” Wanda went on, letting her go after a moment. “I was worried my directions weren’t clear enough.”

Darcy felt Wanda’s fingers intertwine with hers, but she stayed rooted on the porch. “What are you doing?” she asked, willing away the bubble of fury that had joined the swirl of feelings in her gut.

“What do you mean? What are _you_ doing?”

She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, forcing herself to stay calm “Twelve hours, Wanda,” she said tightly. “I just spent the last _twelve_ hours getting here to—”

“To see me,” Wanda finished, her voice not having lost its effervescence. She laughed and tugged on Darcy’s hand again. “Because you’re the best. As always.” Another laugh. Darcy thought she might pass out from everything coursing through her body. “Come on,” she said while her sister fought her gag reflex again. “Don’t just stand there all night, let me get you a drink.”

Against her better judgement, Darcy’s feet unglued themselves and she half-stumbled into the little house. “I don’t want a drink, Wanda,” she said firmly. “I want you to tell me—”

“Is this the sister I’ve heard so much about?”

At the sound of this new voice and the shadow that fell across the foyer behind Wanda, Darcy’s heart dropped somewhere around her stomach. She could sense him before she even had a chance to look at him and every nerve stood on end with the desire to keep hold of the hand in hers and run as fast as they could to the car. He had a sharp ambition that burned at her throat like bile—laid over with bitter entitlement and something else. Something buried well beneath all that. Something rancid. Rotten.

_Goddamnit, Wanda._

Her sister’s slim arm slipped over her shoulder. “This is her!” she said, letting her fingers dig into Darcy’s skin for a moment. “I can’t believe it’s taken you two so long to meet.” _Don’t leave,_ Wanda’s voice hissed in her mind. As clearly as if she’d said it out loud. _I’m sorry. I need your help._ “Brock, this is the best sister in the world, Darcy.” She swung them both around to face him. “Darcy, this is Brock—my fiancé.”

He was tall and imposing; olive skin and deep brown hair and eyes so dark they looked almost black. His arms rippled with muscles too big for the t-shirt he was wearing, and thick veins ran along his forearms. He might have been handsome, Darcy decided, studying him as he extended his hand. If it weren’t for the way his lips curled into more of a smirk than a smile. And if not for the look in his eyes that told him there was nothing there she could trust.

She forced herself to shake his hand and produce a laugh that she hoped hid her shock. “Fiancé?” she repeated, looking from him to Wanda and back again. To her dismay, Wanda held up her left hand and displayed a large, glittering diamond ring. Darcy blinked and choked out another laugh. “Wow,” she managed before she realized Brock still had hold of her hand.

“So this is a little formal isn’t it?” He yanked her forward before she could pull away. His arms went around her like a pair of boa constrictors in a hug that threatened to push her nausea over the edge. “We’re family now.”

Wanda had closed the door by the time he released her. “Come on,” she said, taking Darcy’s hand again. “Let’s get you a glass of wine; dinner’s almost ready.”

It wasn’t until she’d started walking toward the kitchen that Wanda glanced back over her shoulder and her hair moved away from her face that Darcy could see what she’d been trying to hide. With her hair down, the light in the foyer had been just dim enough that she hadn’t picked up on the fresh shiner blossoming at Wanda’s temple.

Everything inside her clenched in rage and Darcy tightened her fingers with her sister’s. _It’s okay,_ she thought, hoping Wanda could hear her. _I’m here. I’m not going anywhere without you._

She waited for some kind of explanation. For Wanda to tell her what she was doing there. To have a moment alone to tell her to stop whatever this was and get in the car so she could drive them both to the closest police station. But Wanda only led her to a small kitchen where she’d opened a new bottle of a red wine with the word _Anastasi_ printed on a gold label and asked if she minded prepping brussels sprouts.

Brock leaned comfortably in the doorway; his arms crossed over his chest, that smirk still stuck in the corner of his mouth as he teased Wanda and they talked about improvements he was going to make to the house once it got cooler. He’d just purchased it, she discovered. A surprise for his bride-to-be. They’d only been there a few days weeks. Darcy didn’t know what to think, looking from one to the other as she took the sprouts from the well-stocked refrigerator. They seemed so normal. So settled and comfortable. If it wasn’t for the bruise on Wanda’s face and the erratic energy coming off her in waves, Darcy would never have thought something might be wrong.

But something _was_ wrong. And as she reached for the balsamic glaze, Darcy felt her connection with her sister blaze white hot and she gripped the edge of the counter when a barrage of memories took hold and played without permission in her mind’s eye.

Little things at first. A few too many questions about where she was when she wasn’t with him. Following her to work without her knowledge. Spying on her when she was out with her friends.

Darcy’s headache returned full force while Wanda poured out all the details she could of the last year she’d spent with Brock. All the while keeping a smile on her face, a light teasing lilt to her voice as she moved around the kitchen prepping dinner like the perfect hostess.

Her hands were shaking when she managed to get the glaze from the cabinet and drizzle it over the vegetables in the bowl. She could feel the bruises Brock’s fingers had left on Wanda’s arms when he grabbed her and shook her and demanded in a low, gravelly voice to know where she’d been and who she’d been with. Her heart ached with Wanda’s ever-shrinking circle of friends. People she wasn’t allowed to see anymore. People who didn’t come around if Brock would be there.

Fighting. Shoving. Glass shattering against the walls.

Wanda crying.

Brock apologizing.

Always apologizing.

“Darce, 400 or 425 for those?” Wanda’s voice snapped her attention across the room where her finger was poised over the buttons on the oven.

“425,” she answered numbly. The images hadn’t stopped. It was like Wanda had turned on a faucet of everything she’d been keeping from Darcy.

Brock on his knees as she almost made it to the door. _I’m sorry baby,_ he said over and over again. _I don’t mean to get so mad._ Always sorry. Always never going to do it again. Always so sweet again after he’d scared her enough that she thought he might really hurt her. _You know you’re everything in the world to me._

“Hey.” It was Brock who was talking this time, waving a hand from the doorway. Still smirking. Darcy wanted to pick up the knife closest to her and drive it into his chest. “You still with us?”

She blinked again, forcing her face to remain neutral. Wanda was afraid of him. Wanda wanted to leave him. Wanda needed her to stay cool. “Sorry,” she coughed out a laugh so fake she wanted to wince. “Long trip. Spaced out for a minute.”

He accepted this with a nod. “Where are you staying while you’re in town?”

She opened her mouth and tried to lie, but Wanda was faster. “I was hoping she could stay here,” she said with a glance up from the salad she was assembling. Darcy hated the timidity that flickered in her eyes when they met his. “If that’s okay? I just haven’t seen her in so long and…” she trailed off, clearly waiting for him to respond. To tell her how she was supposed to finish that sentence.

“I can get a hotel,” Darcy spoke up when Brock had let Wanda dangle just a moment too long for her liking. “I don’t want to impose.” If she had a hotel room, it would be easier to get Wanda away from him. They could speak freely there. It would be easier to breathe away from him. Easier to plan Wanda’s escape.

But he only glanced between the two of them for one long moment before his face brightened into a wide smile. “Don’t be silly,” he laughed jovially. “Of course you’ll stay here. Wanda hasn’t seen you how long? Come on, what kind of brother-in-law would I be if I kept you two away from each other?”

_Don’t you know you’re everything to me?_ Brock had demanded, his face close to Wanda’s, his large hand clamped at her thin shoulder, squeezing the pressure point between her collarbones with his thumb. _Why do you want to hurt me like this?_

Darcy turned swiftly back to the mixing bowl and blindly groped for a spatula. Her stomach lurched as she saw him kneeling behind Wanda while she soaked in a claw foot tub; saw him place his hands on her narrow shoulders and push her slowly under the water. So slowly she didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Her long arms and legs thrashed and tossed water all over the bathroom until he finally released her. Laughing. Telling her he’d just been messing around. This was just a few days ago. It had been enough for Wanda to finally tell him she’d had enough. He was scaring her. She didn’t think they were good for each other.

Her knuckles were white as she gripped the spatula and coated the brussels sprouts in heady balsamic glaze. In her mind’s eye, she watched Brock’s hand wrap around her sister’s throat as his fist clenched and, before she could even try to squirm from his grasp, connected with the outside edge of her right eye. The heavy signet ring he wore on his right hand had ripped the skin, tearing at the delicate flesh of her cheekbone.

Two hands fell to Darcy’s shoulders and she jumped without thinking. Wanda laughed lightly and turned her around. “Sorry I put you straight to work,” she said, when Darcy was facing her. “Why don’t you sit down, and we’ll all catch up while everything finishes cooking.”

She forced a smile and nodded. “Sure,” she breathed, hoping her knees would carry her all the way to the living room.

Brock was already there when she arrived and lowered herself carefully into one of the armchairs. She didn’t trust him enough to want to take her eyes off him.

“Y’know,” he gave her another smirk as she pretended to swirl her wine around her glass like she might enjoy drinking it. “When Wanda talked about her sister and how close you two are, I always figured she meant she had a twin.” He gave her a once over. “But you don’t look anything alike.”

“No,” Darcy shook her head. “We don’t. Kind of a family trait, actually.” She flashed him a quick smile that she knew instantly was too insincere. “But you’re lucky,” she added, hoping he thought she was joking because she liked him. Not because she wanted to kill him for what he’d done to her sister. “You got the prettiest Owens.”

There was a moment Wanda had let her see, when Brock had proposed a few weeks ago. When he’d slipped that outrageous diamond on her finger and told her they were meant to be. Wanda had believed him—or wanted to, at least.

Darcy shifted uncomfortably and made herself take a gulp of red wine. That was the worst of all of this. That beneath everything he’d done, all the ways he’d destabilized and terrified her, Wanda still loved him. Still desperately wanted to believe that he meant his apologies. That he _didn’t_ want to keep hurting her.

Darcy took another drink.

Because all Wanda wanted—all Wanda had _ever_ wanted—was to be loved. Cared for. Treasured.

It was what she’d been chasing her entire life. Why she kept offering pieces of herself to these men who didn’t deserve her. Why she’d always been so rootless. So restless.

Brock smirked again. _Wanda,_ Darcy thought, hoping her sister was listening, _what are we waiting for?_

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said, letting his eyes roam over her chest and thighs before they slowly wandered back to her face. Even though the long-sleeved t-shirt and yoga pants she’d been wearing for the last day couldn’t have been more modest, under his gaze she still wished she’d worn something else. “Though you’d be prettier if you smiled every once in awhile.”

Again, Darcy twitched her lips without showing her teeth. “I’ve heard that,” she assured him.

“So you’re the doctor, right?”

Darcy blinked. “Uh, no,” she shook her head. “Our cousin Jane is the doctor.”

“Oh, right,” he nodded with understanding and interest she could tell he was faking. “There was a whole bunch of you girls all together, wasn’t there?”

She frowned. “I guess…” her shoulder moved in a shrug. “Four of us.”

“Like _Little House_ ,” Brock said with a low chuckle that only made Darcy like him even less.

She tilted her head to one side. “ _Little House_?”

“Yeah,” he laughed again. “ _Little House on the Prairie_. All those girls in one house. Getting into trouble all the time.”

She felt her frown deepen. “I…think you mean _Little Women._ ”

Brock scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I think I know what I mean,” he said sharply.

Darcy stared at him for a long moment, knowing it was not worth it to lay into him about how _Little Women_ and _Little House on the Prairie_ were absolutely nothing alike. And how, even if they were, her and Wanda’s upbringing with Jane and Natasha was nothing like either book. Knowing it was a futile argument to get into and still desperately wanting to say something anyway.

She didn’t. She kept her mouth shut and let him roll his eyes at her, thinking she was an idiot if it kept the peace for Wanda a little longer.

But she didn’t want to sit in the same room with him anymore. Didn’t want to breathe the same air. Every second spent in his presence kept that cloying sickness in the back of her throat. “Y’know,” she shook her head and forced a laugh. “Wanda’s a menace in the kitchen, I think she probably needs my help after all.”

_I’m_ trying _to get us out of here_ , Wanda’s voice echoed in her ears. _He was supposed to be out an hour ago._

Darcy frowned as she ducked back into the kitchen and stood as close to her sister as possible over a roasted chicken she’d just pulled from the oven. “What do you mean an hour ago?” she asked out loud, her voice barely audible over the sound of the oven fan.

“I put the belladonna in his first drink,” Wanda responded, only mouthing the words while she used a baster to drizzle juice over the chicken. “He should have been out before you even got here.”

Darcy glared at her for a long moment, choking back different accusations of whether or not Wanda drugged her boyfriend correctly and if she knew what she was doing with all the poison she’d already given him. She swallowed back the words and shook her head. “What else do you have?”

“Bathroom’s just down the hall on the right,” Wanda said brightly, raising her voice back to its normal volume.

“Thanks,” Darcy chirped back, fake enough that they both rolled their eyes at her attempt at casual before she retreated to the back hallway and the bathroom on the right.

Wanda kept her ingredients in the same place their mother had—beneath the bathroom sink in a wicker basket. Unlike their mother’s, Wanda’s was a disorganized mess of unmarked bottles, faded and peeling handwritten labels, and jars with crumbling corks. Darcy sighed and began to rummage. She squinted at the labels and the contents, trying to identify the substances in her hands.

Ginseng. Tonka beans. Foxglove. Ginger. Valerian root—

Darcy stopped. That might do the trick. A little valerian was a decent sleep aid. If Wanda had already given Brock a dose of belladonna, the little extra might be enough to nudge him into unconsciousness and give them time to get away before he woke up.

The rise and fall of voices from down the hall stopped her from digging any further. Brock and Wanda, of course. She couldn’t make out the words, but she didn’t have to. Wanda’s sudden spike of fear was as real as her own and Darcy stood and threw open the door without another moment of hesitation.

“I don’t care what I said,” Brock was back in the kitchen now. “I don’t want her here.”

“Can you please just calm down?” Wanda asked, her voice much lower than his. “I’ll ask her to—”

“No, you _tell_ her—”

“Tell me what?” Darcy asked, appearing in the doorway as Brock towered over her sister, having backed her up against the counter. She looked between the two of them. “Everything okay?”

“Brock, uh,” Wanda laughed weakly. “Brock thinks you don’t like him, Darcy. Isn’t that—”

Darcy lifted her eyebrows and felt all the sticky, unpleasant feelings that lived in this house rise up within her. She noticed Wanda hadn’t finished her sentence. Darcy didn’t wait. She bit her lip and did her best to look apologetic. “Well I was kind of rude,” she admitted, tucking a hand into the waistband pocket of her pants to slide the little bottle of powdered root sideways where it would be less noticeable. “I just completely spaced out while we were sitting there,” she went on, tapping her fingers to her forehead. “You know how I get when I’m tired, Wan.” Before Wanda could respond, Darcy went on. “So rude. I don’t know anything about this man you’re going to marry and I can’t even think of a single thing to ask the first time I get a chance to talk to him one-on-one.” She laughed and shook her head before she aimed a smile she hoped looked genuinely apologetic at Brock. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This whole engagement thing just took me by surprise. Why don’t you guys go sit and I’ll refresh everyone’s drinks and we can just…” she waved her hands, “start fresh. Okay?” Brock didn’t look placated enough so she added, “And I think maybe it’s best I stay in a hotel tonight after all. I really don’t want to impose.”

There was a moment of tense silence between the three of them before Brock suddenly smiled, wide and bright again. No trace of the threat he’d just been a moment ago. She hated that even more. “Hey, I probably overreacted too,” he said easily, holding up his hands. “I just don’t want anything to be weird between us,” he said and placed a hard, possessive kiss against the side of Wanda’s head.

Darcy waited until he had wandered from the kitchen again before she pointed to the nearly empty wine glass on the counter. “This yours?” Wanda nodded, eyeing her warily. Darcy shook her head and grabbed the bottle they’d been pouring from before she shooed her into the next room. She refilled Wanda’s glass, then her own halfway, and took a fresh glass from the rack on the wall.

She didn’t like the way her hands were shaking as she reached into her pocket and uncorked the little vial of valerian root. She tapped it once against the mouth of the bottle and again when only a few specs hit the wine inside. Enough of a dose sprinkled over the surface of the wine and Darcy recorked the vial first, slipping it back into her pocket before she placed a thumb over the opening of the bottle and gave it enough of a swirl that the valerian root dissolved.

She shook the tremor from her hands and took Brock and Wanda’s glasses out to them. “You guys relax,” she said with a smile, trying to hide her relief that Brock barely looked at her before he put his glass to his lips.

Valerian root was tasteless. Odorless. Fast acting. Especially, she had to imagine, when paired with a healthy dose of belladonna.

The timer on the oven went off again. Sprouts this time. Darcy returned to the kitchen as she heard Wanda excuse herself to the bathroom.

Feeling as though every move she made was done on a bed of eggshells, Darcy managed to find serving bowls and plates for the remaining dinner assembly and had almost finished cutting the chicken when Wanda reappeared in the doorway with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. “What’s wrong?”

“What did you take from the bathroom?” she demanded, her voice low and fierce.

Darcy frowned. “Just some valerian root,” she said, matching Wanda’s whisper. “It’s basically just a sleeping pill.”

Wanda’s eyes narrowed. “Did you put the vial back?”

“No,” Darcy shook her head. “Not yet. Why?”

Wanda held out a hand and uncurled her fingers. Still frowning in confusion, Darcy plucked the vial from her palm and pushed the curling paper label back into place.

Her mouth ran dry. Wanda’s handwriting was messy, but not illegible. The words she’d written were remarkably easy to read. Exactly as easy as they’d been when Darcy had read them in the bathroom. Moments before she’d heard arguing and had felt Wanda’s pulse spike with fear.

When she’d rushed from the room with a vial in her hand that she’d shoved into her pocket and then dumped into the bottle of wine. So certain of what she’d grabbed that she hadn’t bothered to look a second time.

“Darcy,” Wanda asked. Her voice was remarkably even, considering how Darcy’s heart felt like it might beat straight out of her chest. “What did you give him?”

Her hand shook again as she dug back into her pocket and retrieved the vial she’d used on Brock. The vial she’d held in _other_ hand when she first heard the arguing in the kitchen. Numbly, Darcy held it out, label facing up, displaying the name of another, deadlier poison. A poison that would have been fatal even with just the few flecks that had first hit the wine. Before Darcy had shook in more—just to be safe.

_Foxglove._

A little cry slipped from Wanda’s lips as she placed a hand over her mouth and darted back into the living room. Darcy followed, slower than her sister and without the sounds of panic.

She stood, feeling dazed as Wanda stepped over the wine glass that had slipped from Brock’s hand and spilled a deep red wound into the carpet. She watched Wanda try to smack Brock awake; watched her fingers move over his thick neck, frantically searching for a pulse; watched as the panic drained from her face and was replaced with cold, stunned acceptance.

Idly, Darcy realized that all the sickness she’d been feeling, all the sharpness and bitterness was gone. Nothing tasted cold or rotten anymore. There were still other feelings. Dread. Panic. Fear. But everything she’d been feeling since Brock had first spoken, everything that had made her want to gag and vomit—that was gone.

It was gone because Brock was dead.

Because Darcy had killed him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Resurrection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter that's very very close to the source. All the actual magic comes from Alice Hoffman--she's the best. And so are you guys!! Love you all forever and ever.

The floorboards creaked in the same place each time Wanda paced over them, alternating between wringing her hands and clutching her head. Darcy looked up from the chair where she’d dropped down under the weight of her actions. “Wanda…”

Wanda stopped pacing for a second, only to beeline for the mantle and the pack of cigarettes and lighter resting there. “Don’t say anything,” she commanded before she placed one between her lips and lit it.

“Don’t say anything about what?” Darcy asked. “About your smoking or about the dead body on the couch?”

The space between the fingers on Wanda’s free hand crackled with red sparks before she curled her fingers in a fist and started pacing again as the familiar sick smell of cigarette smoke invaded the room. “Either.”

Darcy dropped her head into her hands again. “We’ve gotta call the police.”

Wanda let out a joyless laugh. “And tell them what?”

“The truth,” Darcy insisted. “It was an accident—or it was self-defense—I don’t know, either way—”

“Oh yeah,” her sister nodded. “The old ‘slowly-poison-him-to-death-in-self-defense’ excuse. I’m sure they hear that all the time. Probably super common accident, too. All the cocktail recipes that call for foxglove and belladonna these days.”

“Well we can’t _not_ call the police,” she argued, getting to her feet. “And you don’t have to say anything. You didn’t kill him; I did.”

Wanda stopped pacing again. “You wouldn’t have killed him if I hadn’t been poisoning him for the last year.”

“No, Wanda,” she rolled her eyes. “Foxglove would have killed him no matter what.”

“I mean if _I_ hadn’t let him build up a tolerance then he would have been out cold by the time you got here and we could have just _left_ like we were supposed to.”

She threw up her hands. “I’m not going to argue about who killed him _more_ ,” she snapped. “I’m the one who used the deadly stuff,” she pointed to herself needlessly. “I’m the one who’s responsible.”

Wanda’s palm hit her forehead again and she shook her head as she returned to wearing a hole through her floorboards. “How could you not check the labels?”

A quick flare of anger scorched Darcy’s insides. “I’m sorry,” she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Would you rather I _hadn’t_ come back into the kitchen as fast I did? Because it looked to me like you were headed for your second black eye of the week and I was a little _preoccupied_ by trying to keep that from happening.”

But Wanda wasn’t listening anymore. She had turned her eyes toward the ceiling. “Oh, God, please please please if you get me out of this, I swear I’ll be good,” she pleaded. “I’ll be normal, I’ll bake cookies and have babies and—just _please—_ ”

Darcy dropped down onto the ottoman. “I _have_ babies, Wanda,” she reminded her sister fiercely, trying not to grind the words directly through her teeth as images of Cassie and Morgan rose to the forefront of her mind. “I already _had_ normal, and I worked really _, really_ hard to get that normal and now—”

Wanda stopped again, seeming to remember that more than just the three of them in this room existed in the world. “I know,” she said softly and set her burning cigarette on the ashtray by the nearest window before she crouched down in front of Darcy. “I know, I’m so sorry,” she said, that panicky edge still in her voice. “I know we didn’t mean to—” she shook her head. “I didn’t mean to ruin your life but I just didn’t—I didn’t have anyone else to go to and—”

Deciding that irritation was the better part of panic, Darcy held up both hands, blocking her sister’s attempt to pet her hair. “Why did you—” she sighed and let her question die on her tongue. “It doesn’t matter.”

Wanda sat back on her heels and cast her eyes downward. Neither of them had looked across the room in what felt like hours. Though logically, Darcy knew it could only have been a few minutes since they’d let their eyes drift to the couch and the dead body covered with a light blue throw blanket. “This is not what was supposed to happen,” she said finally, getting back to her feet.

“Well what the hell was supposed to happen?” Darcy snapped. “What was the game plan here? Did you think I was going to take you home and what? You’d just never see him again? He’d just let you go? Just like that?”

“Yes!” She cried. “Or me finally leaving would be enough to—” she bit her lip and went for her cigarette again. Vaguely, she motioned to her face. “This wasn’t—I mean, he wasn’t always like this.”

“ _Yes_ , he was,” Darcy said firmly. Wanda’s eyes snapped back to hers. “Everything you showed me?” she reminded, trying to keep the disbelief from her voice. Disbelief that her sister had fallen so deeply under this man’s spell that she couldn’t see what was right in front of her. “All the things he’s been doing? He tried to _drown_ you for God’s sake! You don’t just _start_ doing that at thirty-five. He was _always_ like that—you just didn’t see it.”

They were quiet for a few long moments before Darcy dropped her head back into her hands again. A horde of worst-case scenarios had started gathering around, tempting her into a spiral of realization of all the ways her life had just officially ended. “What if they don’t let the girls stay with Jane and Natasha?” she asked aloud.

Wanda looked back over her shoulder from where she’d been staring out the window. “What do you mean?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “When they take them away from me, Wanda,” she clipped. “Because they _will_ take them away from me once I’m in prison—”

“You’re not going to go to prison, okay?” Wanda insisted.

“Yes, I am,” she countered. “If they don’t believe that it was an accident then I will probably go to prison for the rest of my life and would you _please_ just put that cigarette out?” Her hands balled into fists. “Your quest for an early grave is making my head hurt.”

“No,” she retorted, practically flipping her hair. “If they give you life, then they’ll give me life; so by your logic I should just smoke two at once,” she rolled her eyes. “It’ll shorten the sentence.”

“Oh my God, just shut up,” Darcy moaned. “We have to do something about this. We have to call the police.” She stood up to look for the phone.

Wanda crossed to her and grabbed her by the arms. “Don’t, Darcy. If you call the cops, then it’s all over—”

“It is already all over,” she exclaimed. Her arm shot accusingly at the couch. “He’s dead, Wanda! No matter what we do now, he’s never going to not be dead, so we just have to—” Darcy stopped abruptly at the way Wanda’s expression changed. “What?” she demanded. “What is that face?”

“When Peter died…”

Darcy was already shaking her head. “No. No, absolutely not.”

“You asked Jane and Nat and they said—”

“No. They told me no. They wouldn’t do it.”

“Wouldn’t,” Wanda repeated with heavy emphasis. “Not _couldn’t_?”

She shook her head harder. “No, Wanda. It was a no for a good reason. They were right—if they’d brought him back, he would have been something dark and unnatural.”

“I’ve never known a Brock who _wasn’t_ dark and unnatural,” Wanda countered. “And who cares what he comes back as? He doesn’t need to be Prince Charming; he just needs to be able to fog a mirror!”

Darcy crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “We are not talking about this. This is not an option and I’m not even going to _pretend_ like it might be.”

***

The house was mercifully still empty when they pulled into the driveway in the middle of the night. According to the map, the trip should have taken around 36 hours. Between the two of them, taking turns and defying every speed limit between New Mexico and Massachusetts, they made it in 23.

“You’re sure nobody’s home?” Wanda asked through gritted teeth as they struggled to carry Brock’s body up the back stairs to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Darcy grunted, banging her hip against the door to pop it open. A sheen of sweat had broken out along her hairline. “They’re in,” she kicked a worn wicker basket out of their way, “New York for the weekend.”

“Oh,” Wanda shifted to get a better grip on Brock’s lower half. “That sounds fun—is it the Pagan Street Fair?”

Darcy stopped and looked up at her sister. “Wanda,” she heaved an exhale. “Can we just do this, please?”

Wanda glanced down at the dead body between them. “Sorry,” she grimaced. “I was trying to take my mind off it.”

“You need to keep your mind completely on it,” Darcy reminded as they reached the large, empty kitchen table. “One, two, three.” They heaved Brock up and toward the table, not making it quite onto the first time. His body smashed into the side and they ended up rolling him clumsily onto the surface until he was on his back. “Okay,” Darcy tried to catch her breath. She pointed to the bedsheets they’d used to wrap him in before they’d stuffed him in the trunk. “You…uh…unwrap him. I’ll get the book and make sure we have everything we need.”

Wanda looked stricken. “What if we don’t have everything we need?”

Darcy closed her eyes. “I can really only live in one worst-case scenario at a time. Okay? Assume we’re going to have everything we need.”

“Right,” Wanda nodded swiftly. “You gather. I’ll unwrap.”

The book was heavy and hit the counter with a loud _thud_ that would have made them both jump even if they hadn’t been so on edge. Darcy flipped to the page near the back and unfolded the list of steps and ingredients to consult as she began to gather. Bundles of sage. Black candles. Six-inch steel needles. She tried to think of each item individually as she gathered them quickly. She didn’t want to think about why the spell called for three kinds of insect wings or why they all needed to burn in the same bowl as the mandrake and the jacklebeet. She didn’t care how this spell worked, she told herself firmly. Just as long as it did.

“Okay, Brock,” Darcy’s heart leapt into her throat at the sound of Wanda’s voice from the kitchen. She froze. “I will get you out of this,” Wanda went on, drawing Darcy’s curiosity over her panic and confusion. “But as soon as I do, that is _it._ We are _done_.” Darcy had made her way to the doorway and peered around the corner to find her sister had unwrapped the corpse of her fiancé and cut open his shirt as instructed. “Seriously,” Wanda went on as she busied herself around the kitchen. “It is _over,”_ her hand sliced through the air and she paused for a moment before she turned around and smacked him across the face.

“What are you doing?” Darcy was unable to help the question from rocketing past her lips.

Wanda’s head shot up and she went wide-eyed and attempted innocence. “Nothing. What? Nothing.” As if to prove it, she took a half step away from the table.

Darcy sighed and dropped the book and all the ingredients onto the end of the table. She shoved back her hair. “Wanda,” she leveled her sister with a serious look. “Are you _sure_ you want to do this?”

Wanda looked from Darcy to Brock and back again. She inhaled steadily and nodded once. “Absolutely.”

Her hands didn’t shake as she went through the first few steps. It was easier to pretend that this was just another spell now that she was back in the house, among everything she’d grown up with. If she didn’t look up at Brock’s cold body, at the stony stillness of his chest, she could pretend this was for some desperate woman at the back door.

 _It is,_ she reminded herself as she lit the black candles with the flame that had erupted in the bowl of powdered roots and wings. _It’s for_ two _desperate women._

Darcy shook the thought away and finished setting the candles at the south and east sides of the body. She looked at the next set of instructions. “Move energy over the body, pushing with hands south to north,” she read aloud, trying to push the right kind of energy into her hands before she began moving them over Brock’s torso. After a nod of encouragement, Wanda copied her. “Move air through the lips, over the tongue.” She wet her lips and exhaled, twirling her tongue in a gentle purr. Wanda was faster to join her that time and together they moved air and energy with their lips and hands until Darcy motioned for Wanda to keep going while she kept reading.

“We need something white,” she frowned. “For the symbol on his chest—to draw his soul back into his body.” Her eyes darted around the kitchen before she noticed Wanda brighten and she nodded to the refrigerator, not stopping her purring. Darcy turned, confused until she opened the door and saw the canister of whipped cream on the top shelf. Despite everything, she smiled and shook her head as she grabbed it. “You’re a genius,” she assured her sister before she shook it and used the tip to draw a white star over Brock’s heart. After a second of consideration, she shrugged and tipped her head back to coat her tongue with the sweet whipped cream.

Wanda whined and stopped her purrs to open her own mouth and stretched her neck out so Darcy could spray it right into her mouth like they were sixteen again.

She set the can on the counter and turned back to the book. “Okay, next we insert the steel needles into the eyes—”

“ _In_ the eyes?” Wanda repeated, looking disgusted.

Darcy nodded. “In the eyes,” she echoed, trying to keep her voice steady, as if spiking needles through the eyes of a corpse was something she did everyday.

She handed Wanda one needle as she picked up the other and, with hands that begged her to do anything else, reached out and tentatively pushed on Brock’s eyelid, revealing a milky white eyeball beneath.

She couldn’t help it. She gagged and recoiled as Wanda screamed and dropped her needle. “You know what? I uh,” she shook her hands as if trying to shake away the feeling of having touched dead flesh, “I think we should wait. Just…just wait until Nat and Jane get back.”

Darcy’s eyebrows shot up at the suggestion. “In two days?” she reminded. “You think he’s going to stay fresh until then?” She shook her whole body and forced herself to settle. “We just have to keep going.”

Wanda picked up her needle and tentatively reached for his left eye before she yanked herself back. “I can’t,” she whined. “Can’t you just do them both?”

“Me?”

“You’re a mom,” Wanda said as if that made everything snap right into place. “You have such a stronger tolerance for gross than I do.”

She stared. “I could have a hundred children and not be prepared for this level of gross—”

“Still…”

“No,” she shook her head. “No still. I don’t know what you think being a mother entails, but reanimating the dead hasn’t come up yet.” She steeled herself with another nod toward the body. “And I can’t do both eyes simultaneously,” she reminded tightly. “Just…” she shook her head. “I don’t know. Just pretend you’re piercing an ear or something.” Before Wanda could argue, she looked back to the book. “And we both need to be casting the spell at the same time,” she read from the papyrus. The letters were cramped and faded from a few hundred years of being pressed between the heavy covers of the grimoire. She squinted, committing the words to memory before she said them out loud. “Black as night, chase death from our sight. White as light, Goddess Hecate, make it right.” She looked up and captured Wanda’s gaze. “Got it?”

Wanda nodded and when they spoke next, it was in unison.

_“Black as night, chase death from our sight. White as light, Goddess Hecate make it right._

_Black as night, chase death from our sight. White as light, Goddess Hecate make it right._

_Black as night, chase death from our sight. White as light, Goddess Hecate make it right.”_

With her head hammering high in her throat, Darcy picked up her needle again and motioned to Brock’s eyes, not breaking the spell or the eye contact she’d locked with Wanda. Her sister nodded and they stretched their hands out together, slowly.

A small movement stopped her before she could touch his face again. Darcy stopped chanting abruptly at the same time as Wanda. They both turned toward what had caught their attention.

Brock’s eyes.

Opening slowly.

Completely on their own.

Darcy’s breath left her entirely. Logically, she’d known that this would happen. Obviously if they were bringing someone back to life, his eyes would open again. But she’d been picturing something neater. Cleaner. She’d been assuming he would look just like he had yesterday, before the poison.

He didn’t. The eyes they were looking down into had clouded, milky irises surrounded by blotchy red spots where the whites were supposed to be. They twitched with a sickeningly loud _snap_ from where he’d been looking at the ceiling, first to Darcy.

And the rest happened too quickly for her to do anything but react.

In one moment, Brock was looking at her. The next he’d looked over at Wanda. Before a word could be said, he had sprung up from the table and lunged at Wanda. His hands closed around her throat faster than Darcy could jump to stop him.

“ _Did you think I could let you go?”_ he demanded. Veins in his arms and neck popped violently up in his skin.

Wanda choked and clawed uselessly at his arms, desperately trying to pry his hands away from her throat.

“ _Did you?”_ He sounded different now. There was a darkness in his voice Darcy hadn’t heard before; almost a growl beneath the words. A low hiss that would haunt her later. She didn’t notice it in the moment as she threw herself into his back, pulling at his shoulders, his neck while he screamed in Wanda’s face. _“Did you think I could ever let you go?”_

Wanda’s eyes were bloodshot and bulging slightly. Sparks and crimson smoke only sputtered from her hands as she kept trying to escape his grip. _He’s going to kill her_. Darcy knew it with absolute certainty. She had maybe a few seconds left to stop him.

The cast-iron bread pan had always lived on the counter. They’d never made bread in it, but used it mostly to mold and cool a batch of soap before it was sliced and wrapped for sale. Darcy had used it so many times in her life it was practically an extension of her own hand. She barely noticed its weight as she picked it up and drove it into the side of Brock’s skull.

The first blow was enough to surprise him. Enough that he almost completely released his grip on Wanda’s throat.

The second blow fractured the bone and the side of his head crumpled beneath the corner of the pan.

Wanda barely had time to wrench completely free before he groaned and hit the floor with a thud.

Panting, they stared at his body a second time as nearly-black blood began to pool onto the floor beneath his head. Feeling numb and deflated, Darcy dropped the bread pan, barely registering the sound it made when it clanged to the floor.

Wanda brought a hand up to tentatively touch her neck. “Darcy—”

But Darcy didn’t want to hear it. “I’ll get the shovels.”

It started to rain when they’d dug roughly four feet down. Wanda looked up as the clouds opened and Darcy felt her eyes on her, waiting for her to say it was deep enough. That they could stop digging.

But it wasn’t deep enough. Darcy didn’t stop digging and, after another moment of only the sound of steel striking wet earth, Wanda returned to work.

They were soaked by the time they picked him up again. Their shoes squished and sank into the mud beneath his weight as they wobbled back down the stairs and into the farthest corner of the garden. “Y’know,” Darcy grunted, nearly tripping over a raised root of the apple tree. She’d given up trying to keep Brock’s blood off her and resolved to make them both burn all their clothes when they were finished. “I really don’t say this enough,” she went on as they finally reached their destination. “But you have the _worst_ taste in men.”

“Yeah,” Wanda huffed back, her hair plastered to her head from the rain when she looked up. “I know.”

They took no care in how they lowered him into the ground. Each holding an end, they dropped him unceremoniously into the earth and silently began refilling the hole.

It was almost dawn by the time they were finished and the ground tilled enough to blend in with the other empty garden beds. Wanda’s teeth were chattering and Darcy wasn’t sure she’d ever stop shaking as they returned the shovels to the tool shed. “Darcy,” Wanda said, reaching out a hand to grab Darcy’s shoulder as she turned to go back inside. “I don’t, um,” she looked down at their mud-caked clothes and shoes and swallowed hard. “I don’t ever say it, but,” her shoulder moved in a quick shrug. “Thanks,” she managed a small smile. “Thanks for being my sister.”

Darcy felt her shoulders drop and the anger and resentment that had been building in her chest drain away. For a moment, she forgot about everything that had just happened. For a moment, she was just looking at her little sister, shivering and cold and needing her the way she always had. Darcy sighed and wrapped her arms around Wanda in a tight, wet hug. “It’s okay,” she said saying it out loud to remind herself as well. “This is all over now.”

Wanda nodded as Darcy let her go. They clasped their hands together, scar-to-scar, and went back inside to clean up the blood and the spell and lay the last few days to rest.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wine o'clock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm in the total minority here, but I have never liked the Midnight Margaritas scene--mainly because of how mean they all get (I know, *eye roll* I'm a very soft girl). And I gave it a try, but while four women dancing around a blender is a great visual, it's a little harder to translate to the written word. Hope you don't mind the switch up for this chapter.
> 
> All the love to you all, my friendships. All the love.

It was okay until Jane and Natasha came back.

Well, no, Darcy would realize later on. It wasn’t _okay._ Killing a man _twice_ in two days and burying him in the backyard would never have been _okay_ no matter how long they had to live with it.

But it wasn’t as overwhelming of a secret as it was when everyone was home again. Because, Darcy would consider, when she had a moment to think, when it was just her and Wanda, it _wasn’t_ a secret. It was just something they weren’t going to talk about.

They’d cleaned up the blood and all traces of the spell. They’d burned their clothes and got Wanda as situated as she could be in her old room, now across the hall from Cassie and Morgan.

Darcy was just about to think that she might be able to go more than a few seconds without remembering the feeling of Brock’s skull collapsing beneath the cast iron pan. Without her heart jumping into her throat every time she walked past where the blood stain should have been on the kitchen floor. Without wondering if there was anyone left to miss Brock Rumlow or come looking for him.

And then Natasha’s beat up Blazer rumbled to a stop in the driveway a day earlier than expected.

Darcy heard the telltale sounds of Cassie and Morgan’s excited babble as the engine shut off and car doors slammed. Across the kitchen, Wanda jumped from where she’d been stirring cream into her coffee and shot Darcy a look of pure panic. Her hands crackled crimson before she started to fidget in earnest. “Did you tell them I was coming?” she asked, her voice in a low whisper.

“What?” Darcy frowned. She didn’t want to admit that she’d felt a moment of panic too. It would do no good for Wanda to think they had something more to worry about. “I mean, they knew I was going to get you—I’m sure they assumed I’d bring you home.”

There was an unspoken agreement that no one was going to know what they’d done. Not Jane, not Natasha, certainly not the girls. It was done, Darcy had said in the garden. It was all over.

Talking about it would only broaden the circle of people who could end up in prison.

“But what if—” Wanda’s left hand went to her mouth and she chewed on the dry skin by her nail. “What if they’re mad that I’m here? What if the kids don’t like me?”

She scoffed. “Do you have any idea how much the girls have wanted you to come visit?” she asked as a trunk door slammed outside. “They’re going to be—”

“Aunt Wanda!”

They snapped their heads together to see Cassie and Morgan had come through the door and immediately dropped their bags. They raced across the living room to throw their arms around Wanda’s middle. Darcy shot her a quick _I told you so_ look before she smiled as Wanda’s smile transformed her face and she bent down to wrap them both in a hug.

“Hey guys.” Her laugh sounded relieved. “What did you do with my sweet baby nieces?” she asked, pulling away to take them both in. “Because you two are _way_ too big to be those girls.”

“When did you get here?” Cassie asked excitedly. “Mommy didn’t tell us you were coming to visit!”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Darcy said, her smiling doubling when her girls turned and rushed her for a hug too. She bent and kissed them both on the tops of their heads. “How was New York?” she asked. “You guys have fun?”

They looked up, still hanging off her waist with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. “We rode on the ferry!” Morgan exclaimed before her sister chimed in and they started talking at the same time.

“And got tarot readings!”

“And ate bagels from a cart!”

“And I saw a rat that was the size of a _dog!”_

They were still chattering as the door opened again and the remaining Owens women shuffled in with bags and suitcases.

“Hey,” Natasha’s throaty voice broke the brief silence their entrance had brought. She smiled. “There’s the prodigal sister.”

Darcy watched as Wanda shrugged and mirrored Natasha’s smile. “Here I am.”

Jane had untangled herself from her belongings faster and was the first to wrap Wanda in a hug. “I’m glad you’re home,” Darcy heard her say into Wanda’s hair. “We missed you.” She pulled away after a long moment and her eyes darkened as they fell to the bruise still yellowing on Wanda’s cheek and the dark purple fingermarks Brock had squeezed into her long neck. She pursed her lips for just a second before she brightened again. “Let me mix up some mugwort,” she said softly. “It’ll clear that right up.”

Wanda was still nodding when Natasha swooped in for her hug. “Too long this time,” she said, swaying a little back and forth.

“I know,” Wanda she replied softly. “I’m sorry.”

But if Natasha had been looking for an apology, she didn’t act like it when she pulled back and took stock of all the same marks her sister had noticed. Her smile was tighter. Less maternal than Jane’s had been. Darcy noticed the tendon at the corner of her jaw clench. “Don’t worry,” she said softly, and her thumb brushed over the darkest part of the bruise on Wanda’s face. “He won’t do that again.”

She felt her stomach twist and squeeze with dread, but Wanda only swallowed hard and shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “He won’t.”

Natasha paused a moment longer and tilted her head slightly to one side as if studying her cousin, searching for something. Darcy clenched her teeth and hoped that Wanda wasn’t giving anything away before a cheerful suggestion from Jane interrupted them.

“I think this calls for brownies for breakfast.”

Darcy was aware again of the two little girls still hanging off her waist and looked down to see their eyes still sparkling with excitement. She opened her mouth to disagree, but was cut off by Natasha. “And don’t say no, Mom,” she said, her easy smile returning to her lips. “You technically left your kids with us until tomorrow, so we still get to make the rules.”

Cassie’s arms tightened around her. “Please Mommy? Just today?”

“Please?” Morgan added. “Just a _little_ brownie? Just ‘cause Aunt Wanda’s here?”

She sighed, completely outnumbered and rolled her eyes affectionately. “Fine,” she relented before she had to raise her voice over their cheer as they let her go and charged after Jane. “But _just_ today! We’re going back to healthy breakfasts tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jane waved a hand in Darcy’s direction with a grin.

Wanda laughed again as Natasha looped their arms together and turned them both toward the kitchen. “I can’t believe you’re still eating brownies for breakfast,” she commented lightly, shaking her head.

“Excuse you,” Natasha admonished. “What’s the point in being a grown-up if you can’t eat brownies for breakfast?”

They ate brownies and drank coffee in the living room, spearing bites of fudgy cake with forks while Cassie and Morgan put on a fashion show, modeling all the clothes that had been purchased for them in New York.

“So, you’re sending my girls back to school looking like members of Fleetwood Mac?” Darcy asked when they’d both ducked back into the downstairs bathroom to change into another outfit of gauzy tops and long skirts.

Jane beamed. “You said you didn’t know when you were going to take them shopping,” she shrugged. “We did you a favor. And anyway, they look great.”

She smiled and sipped her coffee. “They _do,_ ” she assured her cousins, not wanting to think she wasn’t grateful. It was only a little difficult to watch how excited her daughters were to get to glimpse into the world in which she and Wanda had grown up. To get to dress like their aunts and go with them on trips to meet bizarre, eccentric people and soak in the magic that swirled around them for a few days. “And I appreciate your help—just let me know how much I owe you.”

Natasha rolled her eyes as she reached for another brownie. “Nice try.”

Choosing to ignore the way Jane and Natasha spoiled her children, Darcy cleared her throat. “Not that I’m not happy you’re back early,” she began carefully. “But did something happen in New York?”

“No, we just didn’t want to miss Wanda before we had to leave again,” Jane said.

“Leave again?” Wanda echoed. “Where are you going now?”

“Burning Man,” the older sisters said in unison and Darcy wanted to drive the heel of her hand into her forehead for not remembering. She’d forgotten that she was going to have to bring the girls to the shop with her all day for a full week before they started school. Jane seemed to notice her pensive face and frowned. “It’s just for two weeks.”

“I know,” Darcy nodded. “I just forgot. It’s no big deal; I’ll just make the girls come with me to the shop.”

“Or I can watch them,” Wanda shrugged.

“Or Wanda can watch them,” she repeated. “We’re good. You guys should go and have fun.”

In truth, Darcy thought as Morgan and Cassie returned in jeans and t-shirts but adorned with colorful scarves and a handful of necklaces, two weeks could be perfect. Two weeks to learn to live with what they’d done might be exactly what she and Wanda both needed. A little time to adjust and put everything behind them so that it could all _really_ go back to normal and she felt like she could breathe again.

Darcy watched with a skeptical eye as Natasha refilled her wine glass for the fourth time.

No. Fifth time.

Fifth time? She squinted and shook her head. That couldn’t have been right. “No more,” she laughed. “I’m already a mess.”

“It’s wine o’clock,” Natasha reminded, refilling her own glass with the deep red wine. “You’re supposed to be a mess.”

“Wine o’clock,” Darcy repeated with a giggle. “Like we’re still in high school.” When they’d all sneak into the backyard at midnight and drink themselves stupid on whatever cheap wine Jane had brought back from college.

“Okay, well if this is a _true_ wine o’clock,” Wanda sat up as straight as she could—she was at least four glasses in herself—and grinned as she turned to her sister and crooked her finger. “Come onnn big sister…” she teased. “Let me see…”

Darcy sighed and held out her right palm. “Don’t give me any bad news,” she insisted.

“And no making stuff up,” Jane reminded from across the table. “We’ll know.”

“She might not be able to say anything,” Darcy countered, letting Wanda take and study the lines in her palm. “If she can’t lie and I only want to hear something good.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Wanda snapped before she giggled again. “I gotta focus.”

The other three were quiet for all of five seconds before Natasha snorted and broke the table into laughter again.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Wanda waved a hand, trying to shush them. She squinted at Darcy’s palm and a slow smile spread over her face. “ _Oh_ ,” she said after a moment.

Darcy felt her eyebrows lift. “Oh? What ‘oh’? What is it?”

“There is a big, beautiful man in your future,” she said, her smile widening. 

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh please.”

“I’m serious!” Wanda exclaimed before she tilted her head, studying her sister’s palm closer. “A _big,_ beautiful man…” she let out a low whistle and shook her head. “Color me jealous.”

“I’m not going to color you anything,” Darcy laughed. “And I don’t believe you,” she went on. When Wanda looked up, scandalized, she narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what he looks like, then. So I know who to be on the lookout for.”

Wanda shook her head again. “I can’t see his face.”

She watched Jane and Natasha exchange a look across the table. “Super helpful, Wand.”

“You wouldn’t care about his face if you could see the rest of him,” she said with a wicked grin that sent their cousins into a fit of drunken giggles.

“Oh my God…” Darcy reached for her wine glass again.

“Come on, come on,” Jane tried to sober and reached over to whack Wanda lightly on the arm. “You have to tell her something useful.”

“Okay, okay,” Wanda gulped at her wine and licked her lips. She ran a black-polished fingernail over Darcy’s lifeline. “What I’m seeing here is that…this man is going to come into your life,” she squinted. “Relatively soon.”

“Had anyone ever actually paid you for this?” Darcy asked around another laugh. “You are like, the worst palm reader ever.”

“Oh, shut up,” Wanda snapped back, good naturedly. “Just because you don’t _want_ this big beautiful man to show up and finally give you the orgasms you’ve been needing—" Darcy gasped as her eyes went wide and she yanked her hand back to smack her sister’s arm. But Wanda was undeterred. “Just because you’re scared doesn’t mean it’s not still going to happen.”

“Bout time!” Natasha chirped from her chair while Jane hummed agreement into her wine glass.

Mouth agape in shock, Darcy looked from one woman to the other until she’d landed back on Wanda. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Where are you even getting this information?”

“You!” they said in unison.

“Your whole aura,” Jane said, as if it were as obvious as pointing out a missing button on a shirt.

“Literally everything about you,” Natasha added.

“And I just saw it in your palm,” Wanda put in with a little bounce of her shoulders.

“No two ways about it, girl,” Jane shook her head. “You need to _come_.”

“ _Hard,_ ” Natasha said seriously.

“And definitely at least three times before he does,” Wanda motioned to Darcy’s palm again. “Whoever he is.”

She could feel her cheeks flaming as she tried to stammer out some defense of her nonexistent sex life. “You don’t even—” a flash of movement from the window derailed her thoughts and pulled her attention to the back door.

She paused, deaf for the moment to her cousins and sister, and squinted toward the windows in the dark. She’d left her glasses upstairs. Between that and the wine, it was easy to convince herself there was nothing there. Certainly nothing that looked like a shadow of someone standing just outside the door.

She looked back to her family. “Did you guys see…”

“Don’t change the subject!” Wanda demanded, draining her glass again. To Darcy’s amazement, she refilled her glass. From the same bottle. She squinted and tilted her head.

How was there still any wine left?

Darcy’s head felt fuzzy for a moment before she shook it and found her smile again. It was as if the world had been slowed down for a long second, like a song lagging or a movie in slow motion, and with Wanda’s words it was righted again. She laughed again. “I’m not changing the subject!” she insisted. “You are all way off base, I have had _plenty_ of orgasms.”

“Pllllenty?” Wanda twirled the word off her tongue. “You’ve had _plenty_ of orgasms?”

“Well, that’s not enough,” Nat said resolutely.

“Plenty!” Darcy repeated. “Why isn’t that enough?”

“Because ‘plenty’ for you is like, five,” Jane said with a scoff.

“Okay,” she said, feeling a little flustered. “I’m sure it was more than five.”

“You’re sure, huh?” Wanda asked skeptically.

“Well, not like I kept track! I mean… who counts that sort of thing?”

“I’m not saying you should have counted but…c’mon, Darcy.” Jane lifted her eyebrows. “No one will think any less of you if you want to admit that maybe with you and Peter there was…” she moved her narrow shoulders. “Room for improvement?”

“Who said I wanted to admit that?” She asked, noticing as she did that Natasha’s gaze had drifted back to where her attention had been pulled before. But Jane brought her back with another circular motion of her hand rather than repeating what she’d said about her aura and Darcy felt her shoulders drop. “It’s not like it was… _bad_ ,” she managed after a long moment of consideration. “It was nice,” she said hastily. “Just always felt kind of…” Her face twisted along with her stomach. “Quick?”

She could have rushed on and reminded them that for most of the time she was with Peter, there had been babies screaming from other rooms, demanding their time and attention, sapping away their energy until they fell into bed just to sleep more often than not. She could have said that having Cassie and Morgan so quickly, one right after the other, had changed the way she felt about her body forever. That there was always a part of her that felt she needed to hide the width of her hips, the stretch marks on the sides of her breasts, the scar from two Cesareans on her lower belly.

She could have said she thought they’d have more time. That when the girls were older and no longer waking up in the middle of the night or crawling into bed with them, she assumed they’d have a chance for something more than rushed quickies before work and moments they could steal amidst the craziness of their day-to-day lives.

But all that felt like an excuse she was making for a life she didn’t have anymore.

Maybe it should have felt more wrong than it did, talking about Peter like this. And maybe if she’d been in the company of anyone else, it would have. But this was her family—her sisters—and the only people who understood the one thing she didn’t like to admit, even to herself.

That it was only recently that she’d been able to see that Peter had flaws; that their life together was nice, but not perfect like she’d thought when she was in the center of it; that the spell the aunts had cast that brought them together had also cast these long, lingering shadows that had left her questioning everything about her own memories.

“Not that this matters,” she said, forcing herself to brighten above the fog in her brain and the sudden heaviness of her head. She looked at her glass—nearly empty again. She didn’t remember drinking that much. Had she? “Because Wanda is full of shit and there’s no man—big or beautiful or otherwise—in my future so whatever you’re seeing in my aura,” she mimicked Jane’s gesture from earlier. “Is just going to remain unresolved.”

“Well if Wanda isn’t full of shit—” Natasha started, seeming to drag her gaze from the window.

“She isn’t!” Wanda exclaimed, reaching again for the bottle in the center of the table.

“Then let’s hope whoever she saw in your future has nice slow hands on top of everything else.”

Darcy was about to respond when a another flash of movement stole her attention. A dark blur of movement—a smudge of a shadow raced across the wall. Too fast to be one of theirs. Darcy looked around the kitchen, feeling woozy again, searching for its source. “Where did that—”

But no one was listening to her. Their glasses were refilled and the wine sloshed recklessly over the rims, splashing onto the table and staining the wood like blood. She felt hot all of a sudden. Too drunk and not in control of her thoughts and her words.

Across the table, Jane leaned heavily into Natasha as they drunkenly laughed at whatever Wanda had just said.

But Darcy hadn’t heard her. Another shadow skittered around them and she felt her stomach turn.

“Wait,” she shook her head. “This is… “ Her face pinched in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“I said something better pick up for at least one of us,” Wanda repeated, slurring her words more than she had a moment ago. “Or else we're going to be a house full of old spinsters like whatsherface in—”

“ _Little House on the Prairie_!” Jane and Natasha crowed in unison before they collapsed against one another in another fit of giggles.

“Little House on the… “ Darcy repeated faintly, the blood pounding in her ears. She felt faint. Short of breath. “Why did you say that? That’s not what—”

“Oh, lighten up,” Natasha waved a hand at her. “You should _smile_ more—”

Darcy thought she might throw up. Natasha reached for the bottle again but Darcy snatched it away from her and turned it so she could see the label.

Her heart sank as her hand splayed over the ornate, gold foil design. “Where did this come from?” she asked softly.

“Iuno,” Natasha shrugged and wiggled her fingers, beckoning for it again.

“No, seriously,” she said, unable to look up from the word embossed in gold beneath her fingers.

_Anastasi_

“What is it, Darcy?” Wanda asked, her smile fading slowly from her lips. “What’s…” she stopped herself, eyes going wide with recognition as Darcy moved her hand.

“ _Where_ did you get this?” Darcy demanded, looking up at her cousins. “Where did this bottle come from?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha said firmly, enunciating all of her words this time. “It was a gift.”

“A gift from who?” Darcy asked, feeling her heart start to race. “Who gave it to you?”

“Some secret admirer,” Jane said with a lazy roll of her eyes. “They left it on the porch.”

“It wasn’t on the porch,” Natasha argued lightly. “It was on the back steps—” she grinned, and there was something wrong. It wasn’t her usual smile. A smirk, sickeningly smug and nothing like Natasha herself. “You know…by the roses.”

The whole world tilted as Darcy got to her feet. She grabbed the wine bottle by the neck and threw it forcefully in the sink. The glass exploded and wine splashed violently, showering her and the sink and the counter in dark, accusatory stains of red.

The breaking glass shattered the spell that had fallen over the four of them and almost instantly, Darcy felt her head clear. She turned to find Natasha getting slowly to her feet, Jane sitting upright again, looking confused and suspicious.

“Darcy…” Jane eyed her warily. “What is going on?”

“What just happened?” Natasha asked, stepping over a shard of broken glass on the ground. She looked between her and Wanda before she asked her next question, more slowly. Choosing her words carefully. “What happened while we were gone?”

Darcy pursed her lips and felt herself shaking her head. “Nothing.”

Jane was on her feet now. “Really?” she asked skeptically. “Because this didn’t feel like nothing.”

The accusation in her voice set Darcy’s teeth on edge. Because it was earned. Deserved. She’d never lied to anyone in that room before and she hated that she was lying now. That she’d _be_ lying for the rest of her life. “We had a problem and we—”

“ _I_ had a problem,” Wanda put in suddenly.

All three of their heads turned back in her direction. She hadn’t gotten up from her spot at the table and pulled one leg up to wrap her arms around her knee. “I had a problem,” she said again. “In New Mexico.” She raised her eyes and looked at them after a moment. “I did a spell,” she went on before she shrugged, not coming close to looking careless. “I did a spell and it backfired and Darcy came and got me. That’s all that happened.”

“No it isn’t,” Nat said, matter-of-fact. She looked from Wanda back to Darcy before she asked again, “ _What_ is going on?”

“Nothing,” Darcy insisted. “It’s handled.”

“Which is it?” Jane demanded. “Is it ‘nothing’? Or is it ‘handled’? Because it can’t be both.”

She closed her eyes and forced herself to calm down. “It’s nothing for you to worry about because I handled it,” she said after a breath to regain her composure. “If I hadn’t been able to,” she went on, her stomach twisting with each word that deepened her lie, “then we would have called you.”

The silence in the kitchen was thick and oppressive. It almost hurt to breathe. Jane and Natasha exchanged looks before Jane shook her head and started for the stairs. Natasha lingered a moment longer. “I hope you did handle it,” she said, looking between the sisters again. “You should know by now that nothing stays buried around here for very long.”

 _Secrets,_ Darcy’s subconscious hissed in her ear. _She means secrets._ But that thought did nothing to comfort her as Natasha climbed the stairs behind her sister. She bent and picked up the glass that had hit the floor, hissing as it bit into her fingertip. Wanda had reached for the broom, but Darcy waved her away, suddenly wanting nothing more than to be alone. “I’ll clean it up,” she said, keeping her eyes on her finger, the bright red bead of blood that blossomed there.

“Darcy—”

“I’ll clean it up,” she repeated firmly, turning away from Wanda, from the table, from everything they’d buried in the backyard. “Just go to bed, Wanda.”

She swept up the glass and threw out the rest that had stayed in the sink. She wiped the wine from the counters, the backsplash, and the floors and washed what had hit her skin as best she could.

And then she lay awake in her bed as the scent of Wanda’s cigarettes drifted up from the window below hers. She tried to think about anything else; tried to put aside the memory of the shadow by the door, the lingering feeling of being watched from the window, the way the wine had played tricks with them, but only one image kept rising to the top of her mind.

The bottle. The wine they’d opened at Wanda’s house. The wine she’d poisoned and served to Brock. The wine with the gold label. The word whose meaning she had known a long time ago that had returned full force in the wake of everything that had happened.

_Anastasi._

Resurrection.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phone Tree Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my 2nd favorite scene in the whole movie so it had to go in. Also, for those of you wondering when someone in particular was going to show up...the long wait is over.

The words and accusations from the night before woke up with them, but the hostility seemed to have dissipated by the time the Blazer was packed a second time. This time they were loaded down with camping gear, food, water, fireworks, the telescope, and anything else either of them felt they might need while in Black Rock for ten days.

“We don’t have to go,” Jane said quietly, after she and Natasha had hugged Morgan and Cassie tightly and pressed kisses into their hair.

“Of course you do,” Darcy said, hoping to keep her voice light enough to be convincing. “You’ve had the tickets since January. We’re fine here.”

There were no further arguments and in the work of a few minutes, the Blazer was rumbling back down the street, headed west for the desert. Darcy turned from the front door and tried to put the worried looks of her cousins out of her mind as she clapped her hands. “Okay, we need to get—” she stopped and frowned at Morgan, standing in front of her. “Sweetheart, what is that ugly thing you have around your neck?”

Morgan looked down at her chest and picked up the clouded, rough edged crystal hanging on long, tattered and fraying piece of twine. “Auntie Nat gave it to me,” she said, looking offended by her mother’s description. “It’s to protect us. Cassie has one too—she said we can’t take them off until she and Aunt Jane get back.”

Darcy’s stomach clenched and she felt herself nodding and willfully not making eye contact with Wanda. “Uh, okay,” she said, turning Morgan around to herd her toward the kitchen where Cassie was standing at the window, peering into the backyard. “Hey,” Darcy scratched her nails against the back of Cassie’s head. “Come on, baby, we’ve gotta get moving.” She went to put a hand on the doorknob, but Cassie surprised her and placed a hand firmly over hers, stopping her from turning the knob.

She shook her head. “No, Mom,” she said seriously. “Don’t go out there.”

Darcy frowned again and moved around to peer into her daughter’s face. “Why not?” she asked, forgetting to be impatient when she saw the genuine concern in Cassie’s eyes. “What’s wrong, honey?”

She only shook her head again. “Just wait until he’s gone.”

“Wait until who’s gone?” she asked, hoping she was the only one noticed the way Cassie’s words had prickled her skin with goosebumps.

“The man by the roses,” Cassie said softly, before her face wrinkled and she tilted her head to one side. “I think they grew overnight.”

Darcy steeled herself and, keeping her hands on Cassie’s shoulders, turned around to the glass again, expecting to see the shadow from the night before. For that undeniable feeling of being watched to crawl back up her spine. But when she turned, her breath left her in a quiet exhale of relief. There was nothing. Nothing but a large, unruly rose bush she’d never seen before.

Only that couldn’t have been right.

She just hadn’t noticed it before, she told herself. _Cassie_ hadn’t noticed it before.

She looked back down at the little girl. “There’s nobody there, honey,” she said patiently. “It must have just been a shadow.”

But Cassie was still transfixed, her eyes dark with distrust. “He’s right there, Mom. He’s been there all morning.”

Darcy turned to look again, her stomach rolling with dread. “You’re looking at him right now?” she asked, bending to share a sightline with her daughter, hoping she could spy one of the neighbor kids hiding, playing a trick. But there was nothing. She looked back as Cassie nodded. Darcy mirrored her. “Okay,” she said softly and kissed the top of her head as she stood up. “We can go out the front. Okay?”

Cassie didn’t argue, but she didn’t look any more comforted as Darcy pulled her gently away from the back door and ushered them all out of the house.

***

She put her girls to work in the back room, helping to unload the latest shipment of supplies and clean and organize when they were done. With Cassie and Morgan occupied and useful, she was free to help customers and focus her attention on her sister, who could not and would not sit still. Wanda had been pacing like a caged lioness, unable to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. She’d nearly knocked over two displays and would have shattered a glass bottle of lotion if Darcy hadn’t caught it before it hit the floor.

She was considering telling her to go home when, for the second time in an hour, she watched her pull a cigarette from her bag. “Wanda,” she snapped, grateful for a slow minute where the shop was empty. “You are _not_ lighting that in here,” she said when Wanda looked up, wide-eyed.

“Sorry,” she mumbled and put it back, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she confessed, leaning against the counter. “I just keep thinking about last night—”

“Stop,” Darcy help up a hand. “There’s nothing to think about,” she said firmly. Wanda had not heard her conversation with Cassie that morning and, with a single look at the dark circles beneath her sister’s eyes and the way her fingers kept twitching with anxiety, Darcy had decided she wasn’t going to tell her. “It’s over, okay?”

Wanda stopped fidgeting for a long moment and looked at her. “You really think so?”

 _Lie to me,_ she was saying with her eyes, louder than if she’d put the thought in Darcy’s head herself. _Tell me it’s going to be okay._

“Yes,” Darcy lied. “It’s behind us—we just need forget about it.”

It was a little later, when she was in the back, working on a different blend of herbs for a variation on her sleepy spray, that she heard Wanda’s voice from the front. “She doesn’t really want me working here,” she was saying, and Darcy stopped, herbs half ground in the mortar in her hand.

“It’s not you,” Jemma, one of her two employees, assured Wanda, sounding older than her twenty-two years.

“It’s Phone Tree Day,” Daisy—the other half of her payroll—chimed in.

Darcy looked at the clock and the calendar beneath it and wrinkled her face with a groan. “Damnit,” she muttered, dropping her shoulders with a sigh of resignation. She had completely forgotten, though she felt a rare stab of appreciation for this obligation for giving her a reason to be snappy and on edge that had nothing to do with the dead man in her backyard. She spared a glance to Cassie and Morgan—both finally bored enough to sit quietly and read the books they’d brought—wondering if they were attributing her bad mood to Phone Tree Day too.

“What the hell is a Phone Tree?” Wanda asked, sounding skeptical.

“PTA thing,” Jemma answered at the same time Daisy said, “Bullshit popularity contest.”

Not wanting to listen anymore, she grabbed her purse and keys and waved to the girls on her way out of the test kitchen. “Hold down the fort?” she asked of her employees.

“Of course,” Jemma nodded.

“I’ll be back,” she said and turned to go.

“You have to go now?” Wanda asked, looking confused.

“Yeah,” Darcy didn’t stop on her way to the door.

“You want me to come with?”

“No.” At least that was the truth. She pulled the door shut behind her before Wanda could protest any further. Even if she already knew—or if Daisy and Jemma would actually explain what it was—Darcy didn’t want to explain to her sister where she had to go, what she had to do, why she was dreading it more than a root canal. 

Wanda would think it was stupid.

And it _was_ stupid. Even more stupid that Darcy let herself care enough to dread it each time.

The elementary school still smelled exactly the same as when she’d attended as a child. A sickening mixture of peanut butter, paste, and the cleaning chemicals they used on the floors. She double-checked that she wasn’t late before she hurried into the empty fourth grade classroom and took a seat near the back.

There were plenty of things that Darcy had come to hate about having to be a part of the PTA. She hated the near-constant fundraisers, and the implication that everyone had extra time and talent and money to pour into the school at the drop of a hat. She hated the city-council-like meetings that happened every other month and seemed to take longer and get more boring each time. She hated the cattiness of the other women—the same women she’d grown up with, who’d called her and Wanda every name in the book and had gone out of their way to ensure they were excluded from everything—and how ranks in this silly organization were worn as some kind of badge of honor.

But there was nothing— _nothing—_ that Darcy hated more than Phone Tree Day.

Phone Tree Day happened twice a year and it was painfully uncomfortable each and every time. Darcy would dutifully go and sit through these performances led by mean girls who’d grown up to be mean women; she’d watch, teeth on edge, as they congratulated each other and applauded each other for winning the most recent popularity contest and lorded over one another whose name had ended up at coveted spot at the top of the phone tree.

The most popular woman, of course, was always at the top. Deemed the most responsible. In charge of calling the other parents in the event of an emergency—snow days, chicken pox outbreaks, that sort of thing.

Darcy’s name was always somewhere near the bottom, if they bothered to add her at all.

And she didn’t care—she _didn’t_. She absolutely. Did. Not. Care—but there was a large part of her that wished she was just a little less responsible. A little _less_ concerned with what was happening with her daughters’ education. Because if she cared a little less about the rest of this, then she wouldn’t feel the need to even come to these meetings and she wouldn’t let herself be publicly snubbed by the same girls who’d been snubbing her for twenty-five years.

There was plenty to discuss at this meeting—the first of the new year, PTA President Christine Everhart kept reminding them. Head cheerleader, prom queen Christine Everhart. Who had called Darcy ‘Witch Bitch’ from sixth grade until graduation. Who’d spread a rumor that Wanda had herpes in eleventh grade and convinced half the class that the Owens would steal and sacrifice their pets to the devil—a lie so convincing that Darcy was subjected to random locker inspections for satanic paraphernalia all throughout high school.

“And now,” Christine said from her place at the podium at the front of the classroom. “The moment we’ve been waiting for all summer!” She clapped her hands together in a light round of applause that Darcy could not be bothered to join in. “The name at the _top_ of the Parent Phone Tree—” she stopped as the classroom door opened.

Darcy’s heart dropped and she felt her face heat up as Wanda crossed the threshold and stopped. “Uh, hi,” she said with a half-smile on her lips, looking beautifully out of place in her short dress and thigh-high boots and long sweater, her hair wild and her fingers full of silver rings.

Christine blinked. “Can I help you?”

She fought the urge to hide her face as Wanda’s eyes roamed the room before they landed on Darcy in the back. “I just wanted to um…” she smiled and pointed. “I just needed to see my sister.”

Without waiting for an invitation to join them, she started to inch her way down the rows, taking as long a time as possible, making as much of a spectacle as she could. Darcy shook her head. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “I might as well be naked without my homework.”

Undeterred, Wanda had nearly reached her when Darcy heard the first of the whispers. They spread quickly—a chain hissed around the room, just loud enough to be overheard.

“That’s the slutty one.”

“I thought she was in rehab.”

“I thought she was _dead_.”

“Not dead,” Wanda spoke up with a full smile as she finally reached Darcy’s row. “Very much alive—unlike some of the people in this room.”

The mothers two desks ahead of Darcy had turned toward one another just as Wanda was sitting down. “You know she did it with the _entire_ lacrosse team?”

There was a metallic crack as the woman’s binder snapped shut on her fingers, pinching her hand hard and cracking one of her manicured nails.

“Stop it,” Darcy muttered as Wanda slid her desk over closer.

“Stop what?” Wanda asked innocently.

“Don’t do that,” she motioned with her chin to where the gossiping brunette was sucking on her hurt fingertips.

Wanda snorted. “That wasn’t me,” she insisted in a whisper. 

Darcy smothered a guilty smile between her lips. "Well I certainly didn't--"

"That was _you_ _."_

She firmly shook her head, covering her mouth with her hand. "Stop it," she managed to whisper. "We're gonna get in trouble." Her attempt at quiet only lasted until Wanda reached over and pinched her, sending them both into barely contained giggles.

Christine cleared her throat loudly and shot them a glare that, had Darcy been by herself, would have made her drop her eyes in embarrassment. But having Wanda sitting next to her, Christine’s disapproving eyebrows only made her want to laugh harder.

“ _As_ I was saying,” Christine continued pointedly before she looked up from her papers and smiled warmly. “Now we all know and love this person, and I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the name at the _top_ of our Parent Phone Tree is—” Her smile faltered the moment she glanced down at the page in front of her. “It’s…um,” she pursed her lips and began flipping through the papers with a mild look of distress before she got to the end of her pile and looked up, suddenly almost apologetic. “It’s…Darcy,” she said, her voice a mix of confusion and disappointment. “Darcy Owens.”

Darcy looked up, her own confusion mirroring Christine’s, certain she’d heard her wrong. But all the other mothers in the room had turned back to look at her, all looking just as surprised.

It was Wanda who broke the silence with a loud _crack_ as her hands clapped together, startling the others into an obligatory round of applause. “Woo!” she catcalled, giving Darcy a nudge in the ribs. “Way to go, Darcy,” she said before she looked back at the front of the room. “Good choice, Chrissy!” Darcy’s cheeks were still burning as the applause quieted down and Wanda looked over with a wink. “Now, _that_ was me.”

***

Her good mood only lasted until they got home. She’d managed to put what Cassie had said out of her mind for most the day—the man in the garden, the cold fear in her eyes, the roses—but as they opened the front gate, she had a clear line of sight to the back corner of the garden. The blood red rose bush flourishing there caught her eye and her blood chilled once more in her veins.

Wanda noticed right away and looked up, concerned. “What’s wrong?” she asked as the girls ran ahead into the house. But her eyes slid past Darcy and widened. “What is that?” she asked. “Are those roses?” She squinted and Darcy didn’t have to guess to know she was thinking of Natasha’s words the night before. _It was on the back step. You know…by the roses._ “Those weren’t here yesterday.”

“Wanda, it’s nothing,” Darcy insisted reaching to stop her sister but failing as Wanda darted past her and across the lawn. “It’s fine,” she chased her. “It’s not—”

But the words died in her throat as Wanda reached the rose bush first and let out a strangled gasp. “Darcy this is—” she turned back and automatically clasped her hand in Darcy’s when she’d caught up. “This is right where we buried him.”

“I know,” Darcy said, unable to take her eyes off the bush itself. So many thick, interwoven branches, sharp, unforgiving thorns, and hundreds of thick, dark roses, fully in bloom. It looked like it had been there for a hundred years.

“Do you think—”

“No,” she said harshly. “Don’t even think it.”

“What if we messed something up?” Wanda hissed, her voice dropping into a needless whisper. “What if this is…”

“This is what, Wanda?” Darcy demanded. “What if it’s him?”

“Yes,” she nodded, her eyes wide and uncharacteristically fearful. “What if he’s doing this? What if he’s…”

She put her arms on Wanda’s shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “He’s _not_ ,” she said. “He’s _dead,_ Wanda. He can’t hurt you—he can’t hurt _us_ —” she added, firmly, “anymore.”

But Wanda only looked back at the flowers and pointed weakly. “But these weren’t…”

“They weren’t here yesterday,” Darcy finished for her. “I know. And it doesn’t matter because I’m going to get rid of them.” She pointed to the house. “Go inside, play with the kids.”

“What are you going to do?”

She looked down at the dress she’d worn for work. “I’m gonna change my clothes,” she said reasonably before she narrowed her eyes at the roses again. “Then I’m gonna chop this all to hell and be done with it,” she said, hoping that if she made it sound as easy as taking out the garbage, that would somehow manifest as the truth.

She was armed with thick gloves and pruning shears, in a loose-fitting t-shirt and a pair of ripped and worn out shorts, not thinking about her exposed legs or arms as she started chopping mercilessly at any branch of the bush she could get.

And that’s what she was doing when the car pulled up the driveway, idling for a moment before it shut off. But Darcy didn’t hear that, or the door close, over the harsh slice and snap of branches between the shears and the rattle of thick, shiny leaves shaking against one another. She didn’t hear the man coming up the walkway until he was too close for her to do anything but jump with a shout when she heard him clear his throat.

“Whoa, hey!” he said, holding up his hands as she spun around, still brandishing her shears until they fell from her hands and struck the soft earth between her shoes. He was tall and broad-shouldered with an outrageously strong jaw and blond hair that he ran a hand through before he attempted a smile. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Darcy blinked and shook her head. “Sorry,” she motioned to the tool she’d just dropped unceremoniously. “I didn’t hear you.”

He smiled again—his eyes crinkled a little at the sides—and nodded. “That’s fair,” he said before he looked at the hacked apart topiary and the pile of angry destruction and twisted limbs. “Don't like roses, huh?”

“Uh—” her mind went blank and she stuttered out the word for a moment before she nervously wet her lips and shook her head. “Not these ones,” she managed before she swallowed hard and regained her composure. “How can I help you?”

“I’m sorry to drop in on you like this” he said and reached for something in the front pocket of his leather jacket. “I’m Steve Rogers,” he flipped open his wallet and flashed a badge with a silver star inside a thick circle and Darcy’s heart stuttered in her chest. “US Marshal. I’m hoping you can tell me where I could find Brock Rumlow.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interviews and interrogations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which I steal a LOT of names from the Marvel universe and really lean into the idea of how attractive Steve Rogers is. Love me anyway? 
> 
> <3 <3 <3

Darcy blinked. Her mouth fell open half an inch and she forced herself to cough and clear her throat. “Um…” she squinted in the late afternoon light. “Brock Rumlow?”

“Yes ma’am,” Steve said with a nod as he tucked his badge away. “I’m actually looking to talk to your sister—Wanda?”

Her heart stopped completely as she nodded. “Right,” she managed. “Yeah, yeah of course. I’ll um,” she pointed to the house. “I’ll get her. You can come in,” she shrugged, “if you want.”

“I appreciate that,” Steve said politely, but he didn’t move to follow her.

She stopped at the door and turned back with a frown. Steve looked up. “How did you know she was my sister?”

It was his turn to look surprised. “Oh,” he shrugged. “Lucky guess, I guess? You don’t really look like a Wanda.”

_What do I look like?_

The question jumped to the tip of her tongue and Darcy had to clench her jaw to keep from asking it. She nodded again and didn’t look back again as she let the door bang shut behind her. Cassie and Morgan were at the kitchen table, sitting close together, sharing Jane’s plant book. “Hey, where’s Aunt Wanda?”

“Up in her room,” Morgan said, not looking up as Cassie turned the page in front of them.

She took the stairs two at a time, priding herself on keeping the raw, metallic-tasting panic from completely taking hold until she crashed into Wanda’s room and gripped the door frame.

Wanda was on her yoga mat, pushed up into a downward facing dog. Her head snapped toward the door the moment before her balance toppled and she sank back onto her knees. “What? What’s wrong?”

“There’s a—” Darcy’s breath left her as her heart, finally having permission to pound the way it had wanted to, beat fast and frantic in her ears. “There’s a police officer here.”

Wanda’s eyes widened further. “What?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Not a—not a police officer. He’s a US Marshal. He’s looking for Brock. And I—” she put a hand to her chest. “I think. I am having. A _heart attack._ ”

Her sister was on her feet in an instant and crossed the room. She put a hand to Darcy’s chest and shook her head. “No, no calm down, you’re fine. We’re fine.”

“How?” Darcy breathed. “How are we fine? I don’t…” she scrunched up her face and shook her head again. “This is going to sound really weird, Wanda, but I don’t…I don’t know that I can lie to him?”

She was choking on that inconvenient truth. There was something about Steve that had struck her the moment she’d turned around. Something that practically begged her to tell him the truth. Something that made her simultaneously want him to go far, far away, while still wanting him to stay and help them.

Wanda put her hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake. All the calm Darcy had forced on her sister when they were outside seemed to have taken hold. The panic and fear that had Wanda shaking at the sight of the roses was nowhere to be found. She took a deep breath and then another, waiting until Darcy had copied her before she spoke. “Of _course_ you can lie to him,” she said firmly. “Okay? We’ll just talk to him and if I have to, I’ll hit him with a little Wanda whammy and—”

“No, no,” Darcy held up her hand. “No whammy. Don’t…Just…” she blew out a breath of frustration. “Just tell me what I’m supposed to say to him.”

Still breathing deeply, Wanda nodded. “Yeah, of course. We’re both going to tell him the same thing, alright? He hit me, so I left him, and we haven’t seen him since.” She shrugged. “Simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” Darcy repeated before she heard the door open and the rise and fall of Cassie and Morgan’s voices. “Shit, I don’t know what they’re going to say to him.”

“Go,” Wanda gave her a gentle push. “Be cool. I’ll be down in a minute. Oh, wait!” Darcy stopped in the doorway. “Is he cute?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Cute!” Wanda repeated. “Is he good looking?”

“Oh uh—” she stumbled on her answer. “He’s. Yeah,” she shrugged, hoping to appear casual, not understanding why she was having so much trouble with Wanda’s question. “He’s nice. In a, y’know,” she shrugged again, “please-step-out-of-the-car, kind of way.”

“What’s your name?” Cassie was asking as Darcy reappeared in the kitchen.

“Steve,” the marshal said with a soft smile, watching how the two little girls were studying him. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Cassie, she’s Morgan,” Cassie looked behind her and smiled at her mother. “And _she’s_ Darcy.”

“Well,” Morgan frowned thoughtfully. “ _We_ call her Mommy.”

Steve nodded slowly, his eyes moving from the girls up to where Darcy had stopped in the doorway. “That’s good to know. I’ll make a note of that.”

“Are you here to talk to Mommy?” Morgan asked, resting her chin on her hand. “Is she in trouble?”

Before he could answer that question, Darcy approached her daughters and closed the book in front of them. “Hey, mugrats,” she said lightly, a hand on each of their shoulders. “Do me a favor and take this into the greenhouse please.”

Morgan pouted. “But we were making friends.”

“I know,” she kissed Morgan’s head and then Cassie’s. “But do as I say, please.”

They did, waving goodbye to Steve on their way out. He waved back and returned his attention to Darcy, stopping her as she was halfway around the table. “Sweet kids,” he commented lightly.

She swallowed hard and nodded, forcing a smile. “Yeah, they’re great,” she bit her lip and crossed her arms over her chest. “Where, um,” she coughed. “Where did you say you’re from?”

“I didn’t,” he reminded her. “But I came here from Arizona.”

“Wow,” she blurted out. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Well,” he shrugged. “It’s not really home—I’m on the road more than I’m not.”

“And what—um—what brought you all the way here?” she heard herself ask before she could stop herself. _Stupid question_ , she thought, wanting to smack herself. _The undeniable trail of evidence you left is what brought him here_.

But Steve didn’t say anything of the sort. Instead, he looked almost apologetic as he reached into his jacket again and removed a folded envelope. A faded, folded envelope with Wanda’s old address in familiar handwriting. “Uh, this, actually.”

Darcy felt her heart drop and a flash of heat rise to her cheeks. “You…you read my letter?” she asked faintly, feeling suddenly exposed, like she needed to cover up somehow,

“Yes, I did,” he kept his eyes just downcast from hers as he tucked it away again.

Her mouth opened and closed once before she found her voice again. “That was a very personal letter.” She tried to remember what all she had said to Wanda in that letter. Loneliness, longing…all the sharp and broken pieces of her heart.

Steve nodded and managed to meet her gaze again. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It was.”

“Why did you—”

“Hello there,” Wanda’s voice interrupted Darcy’s question as it formed on her lips. She turned to see that her sister had changed her clothes and draped herself in a loose fitting sundress that showed off her long, graceful limbs, leaving just enough to the imagination to be effortlessly sexy in a way that Darcy could go the rest of her life without achieving.

Steve cleared his throat and greeted her with a nod. “Would you be Wanda Owens?”

“That’s me,” she said, her voice like warm honey as she slowly made her way across the kitchen, trailing her fingers along the table. “It’s nice to meet you, Officer…”

“Steve Rogers,” he clipped. “And I’m with the US Marshals. I’m just going to cut to the chase, ma’am, I’m looking for your boyfriend, Brock Rumlow.”

Darcy watched as Wanda’s face pulled into a grimace. “ _Ex-_ boyfriend,” she said as a slow smile returned to her face. “Just a big mistake, really.”

He nodded again and motioned to the bruises still visible on her cheek and neck as he took a step closer to where she’d parked herself on the end of the table. “And is that his handiwork, there?”

“Mmhmm,” Wanda locked her eyes with his and pouted her lips. “Aunt Pepper always said never let a man hit you more than once.”

“Good advice,” Steve said evenly, taking a step back as Wanda stood up to her full height. “And how long ago was that?”

“A few days ago,” Wanda said without missing a beat. “Three…” she frowned. “No, four days ago?” she looked over at Darcy. “Right? Four days ago?”

She nodded when Steve looked over at her, not trusting herself not to blurt anything out if she spoke.

“Four days ago,” he repeated. “And you haven’t heard from him since?”

“Nope,” Wanda shook her head. “And I’m happy to keep it that way.” She bit her lip and tilted her head playfully. “I’m sorry,” she said coyly, “but has anyone ever read your palm?” Darcy rolled her eyes and looked away, busying herself with twisting turning the jars in the spice rack so the labels were facing the right way.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s just that you have a very commanding presence,” Wanda went on, undeterred by his skeptical response. “And I was just wondering if anyone had ever offered you any insight.”

“No,” he said flatly as Darcy turned back around, her arms crossed over her chest again.

But Wanda was already reaching for his right hand, gently flipping it so it was palm side up. She trailed a finger over the lines and callouses. “Now see, here it is, plain as day,” she looked up again. “You’ve never touched a woman in anger in your life, have you?”

“I’d like my hand back, please,” Steve said before he pulled away and took another step back. “So just to clarify,” he glanced between the sisters again. “You and Brock had a fight? You left him, came here, and no one’s heard from him since.” He looked over at Darcy. “That about right?”

She swallowed hard and nodded again. “Yeah, that’s…it.”

“And the car that’s out front?” he jerked a thumb toward the front door and Darcy once again found it difficult to breathe. She opened her mouth and let out a croak of uncertainty.

“That’s my car,” Wanda said quickly.

Steve looked back at her, almost amused. “That’s your car?” She nodded and Darcy wanted nothing more than to clamp a hand over her mouth and send her upstairs. With Steve deftly deflecting every ounce of Wanda’s usual magnetic, flirtatious charm, Darcy didn’t want her trying to talk to him anymore. _She_ didn’t want to talk to him anymore. At least not until they could get their story straight with a little more believable detail. “'78 Thunderbird? Arizona plates?”

“Yup.”

“No, it isn’t,” Darcy broke in before she could stop herself. “It’ s—it’s Brock’ s car, right?” she looked from Wanda’s wide eyes back to Steve. “That’s where you’re going with all this?”

He moved a shoulder. “It’s…a stop on the way to where I’m going with this, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Darcy echoed. “Well, we stole it.”

“Darcy!” Wanda snapped.

“No, we did,” she rushed on, realizing as she did so that there were too many words lining up on her tongue, waiting to fall off in a tangled flurry. “We stole it and that’s a crime. A big one. Grand theft…uh—”

“Auto,” Steve filled in mildly.

“Yeah, that one. It’s a bad thing that we did and I normally don’t run around stealing cars but we didn’t really have a choice because he was basically, I mean, he was going to _kill_ her if I hadn’t—” she stopped herself, realizing what she was about to blurt out.

“If you hadn’t what?” Steve prompted.

“If…I hadn’t come to get her,” Darcy said, looking up to find that Steve had crossed the few steps to stand in front of her. “And I know it was wrong but I just, I don’t know,” she let out a weak laugh. “I just made a bad choice in the moment and, um,” she faltered and looked down as Steve reached out a hand with a folded white handkerchief and pressed it to her clavicle.

“Sorry. It’s just…you’re bleeding,” he informed her, pulling back the cloth so she could see it stained with her blood. “Probably from the roses,” he said before he raised his eyebrows. “You were saying? Bad choice in the moment?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” she took the handkerchief from him and held it in place herself, hoping that if he took a step back, he wouldn’t be able to see her heart hammering in her throat. “Bad, bad choice and if I could just, y’know, undo it and give him back his car I would be _so_ happy to do that. Because we don’t _want_ his car. We don’t want anything to do with him. So, I’d _love_ to give him back that car but like you said, you just…we don’t…I mean… _nobody_ knows where he is so.” She stopped again and licked her lips nervously. “Yeah. That’s what’s um. That’s what happening with that.”

Steve’s lips set in a straight line as he looked at Darcy for a long moment, seemingly waiting to see if she’d keep rambling. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat. “Right. So…me impounding it isn’t going to be a problem?”

“Pfft!” Darcy waved a hand. “Impound away. Please. We’re literally begging you to take that car away.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth quirked in a brief half-smile that disappeared before he nodded. “Alright then. Happy to help. I’m just going to give a once-over before I get it out of your hair.”

“Mmhm,” Darcy hummed agreement as she nodded and waved him toward the front door.

The moment the door closed, Wanda hopped off the counter and glared at her. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” she demanded, keeping her voice low.

She threw up her hands. “Apparently!”

“Why are you talking so much?”

“I don’t know,” Darcy blurted out. “It’s like I can’t stop. I have no idea—I just want to keep talking and—”

“Well _cut it out,_ ” Wanda hissed. “Get your shit together.”

“I would _love_ to get my shit together,” she whispered back fiercely.

The front door creaked loudly the moment before Steve appeared in the kitchen doorway again. “If you both can spare me a few more minutes, I still have some questions for you both.”

“Both of us?” Wanda asked. “I don’t know how much help Darcy will be, she only met him once.”

Steve glanced between the two of them again. “But that one time was the last time you ever saw him, isn’t that correct?”

They exchanged a glance. “Right,” Darcy nodded.

“Unless this is a bad time,” he went on. “I’m happy to come back later if you want.”

“No, no,” she shook her head, noticing that he’d brought a thick file folder with him from outside. “You’re here, we’re here, let’s just—" she motioned to the other side of the kitchen and the chairs set around the heavy butcher block table.

He removed a yellow legal pad covered in notes from the folder and flipped a few sheets to a fresh page. After that was a handful of 8x10 photographs, clipped together alongside a 4x6 of a young woman, smiling in a backyard by a bonfire. He unclipped the top photo and held it out to Wanda. “Do you recognize this woman?” When Wanda shook her head, he went on. “Her name is Ava Starr. Her family reported her missing about two and a half years ago. Last they knew she was moving in with her boyfriend—”

“Brock?” Darcy asked.

“Yeah,” Steve’s mouth set in a firm line again. “Her body was found in the bay in San Francisco a few weeks later.”

Wanda’s flirtatious sparkle had all but evaporated as her eyebrows dipped together. “What happened to her?”

Steve shuffled his photos and seemed to hesitate before he pulled one from the bottom of the pile. The beautiful woman in the original photo was buried somewhere beneath bruised and blue-gray skin. Her hair strung across her face with a clump of seaweed and her neck was marked with thick bruises in the shape of a hand print. “M.E. said it appeared that she was—” he cleared his throat again. “Held under the water while someone strangled her.”

“Jesus Christ,” Darcy murmured, trying not to think of the memory Wanda had shared with her. Of the way Brock had pushed her under the water while she soaked in the bathtub. The way her limbs had thrashed and the panic had enveloped her along with the water.

“And you think—” Wanda bit her lip. “You think Brock did this?”

“I do,” he said evenly as he tucked the photos away. “Can you tell me how you know Rachel and Frank Leighton?”

Wanda looked blank. “I…I don’t know who they are. Is there a reason I should?”

“Well, I thought I’d check, considering that up until four days ago you were living in their house.”

“What?” Darcy blurted before she could stop herself.

“616 Firestone Drive in Puente Antiguo?" Steve read from the file before he looked over at her. "Is that where you picked her up? When you stole Mr. Rumlow’s car?” Darcy looked at Wanda, who looked just as confused as Steve continued. “That house legally belongs to Rachel and Frank Leighton. It was a rental property—but it doesn’t appear to have been leased out at the time of their disappearance.”

“Disappearance?” Wanda repeated.

“No one’s heard from them in about a month.”

“Brock told me he bought that house for us,” she said faintly, zipping the charm on her necklace in a way that told Darcy she was wanting a cigarette. “I didn’t—” she looked up. “My name wasn’t on anything. He said he bought it as a surprise.”

“That’s what he told me,” Darcy chimed in. “When I was there to get her.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that,” Steve closed the folder again and picked up his pen. “So can you walk me through what happened exactly?”

Darcy’s throat ran dry and she swallowed hard. “Um, I mean, it was pretty straightforward. Wanda called me and asked me to come get her. So I did—”

“You went to go get her?” Steve repeated. “Just like that? Dropped everything and went to New Mexico?”

“Yeah.”

“What about your girls?” he asked, glancing in the direction of the greenhouse. “You bring them with you?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly. “They were with their aunts for the weekend.”

“And what was going on when you got there?” he asked, scribbling on the notepad before he looked up. “When you got to Puente Antiguo?”

“I was packing,” Wanda broke in. “Brock and I were fighting and he was starting to get violent so Darcy helped me throw the rest of my stuff in a bag and we got out of there before it got any worse.”

Darcy stared at her sister, impressed with how well she could slip into a lie while trying to commit her words to memory. Steve accepted this with a nod. “You got out of there before it got any worse,” he repeated. “But you stole his car on the way out? Just for good measure?”

“Well, I just,” Darcy twisted her hands. “I wanted to keep him from coming after her as long as possible.”

She could tell Steve wasn’t buying their story as he looked from her to Wanda and back again. She waited for him to ask her something else. To demand the truth. A truth, she feared, she’d hand over without a fight.

But he didn’t. He flipped over his notepad and set it on the closed folder. “Okay then,” he said. “Thank you for your time, ladies,” he got to his feet and offered Darcy a business card. “If you think of anything else, or if he contacts you,” he looked to Wanda. “Please let me know.”

When they followed him outside, a tow truck had pulled up and was working to hitch up Brock’s car. The sisters watched as Steve spoke to the driver and offered a brief lift of his hand in a wave before he dropped back into his car and followed the truck down the street.

“Why do I get the feeling he’s not going away anytime soon?” Wanda asked when they’d made their way back into the kitchen.

Darcy didn’t answer. Her attention had been pulled to the window that looked into the backyard.

The roses had completely grown back. 

***

She didn’t speak to Steve directly again for two days. Though in that time she was fairly sure she knew exactly where he was just about every minute.

People were talking. Talking about her.

Talking to _him_ about her.

“Well I don’t think I told him anything he didn’t already know,” Darcy heard one of the PTA mothers saying to another when she stopped at the post office. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious that whoever that guy is,” Darcy looked over from the PO boxes and saw one shrug her shoulders. “If he got involved with either of them—he’s definitely dead.”

She was in the supermarket when she caught sight of Steve’s broad-shouldered profile, leaning casually against the deli counter, speaking to two elderly women. She hid behind a display of white bread, watching how Steve’s expression shifted from amusement to disbelief. “So you’re telling me that the older two sisters—”

“Jane, the doctor,” one of the blue-hairs clarified. “And Natasha.”

“Right,” Steve nodded. “You're telling me that Jane and Natasha are actually…”

“May and Pepper!” the other woman exclaimed as if it was obvious. “They worked a spell and made themselves young and beautiful!”

Darcy pursed her lips together and bit back an inconvenient smile. “But didn’t you just tell me that May and Pepper _raised_ Jane and Natasha from the time they were little girls?” Steve asked dubiously.

“Yes!”

“So how…” he paused. “How do you think they managed that?”

There was a pause before the first woman spoke again. “Well I don’t know. They’re the witches! You ask them.”

“Probably something to do with all the sheep placenta that Darcy cooks up down at her shop.”

At that, she rolled her eyes and made the choice to leave the store as she heard Steve repeat, “Sheep placenta?”

“All I said was that she’s a cool boss,” Daisy was saying to Jemma when Darcy arrived the next morning.

“Yeah, that's all I said too,” she heard Jemma whisper back as Cassie and Morgan raced to the back room to drop off their bags of activities for the day.

Darcy stopped at the register and looked between one young woman to the other. “Everything okay?” she asked.

They nodded in unison. “Yeah, we were just talking about that guy—”

“You don’t have to worry about anything, Darcy,” Daisy cut Jemma off. “It’s all good.”

She was torn between continuing to play dumb and making them tell her everything they’d heard about what Steve was hearing all over town. But she didn’t have time to decide which she’d rather do because the bell above the door chimed and started a nice steady morning.

It was later in the afternoon that Darcy saw Morgan perk up from her coloring and her little face wrinkle in confusion. On hold with one of her suppliers, she put a hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver. “What’s wrong, Morgan?”

“I thought I heard…” she frowned and trailed off.

Before Darcy could ask her to finish her thought, Cassie perked up and jumped up from her book to peer out into the shop. She looked back over her shoulder with a broad smile. “Mommy, can we go help out front?”

“Uh, sure,” Darcy shrugged as the woman on the other end of the call returned to the phone.

She placed her order quickly and let her curiosity get the better of her when she heard her daughters excited chatter rise above the usual din. She followed them out and stopped at the sight of the two of them leading Steve around the shop.

“You smell pretty good,” Morgan informed him seriously. “So you probably don’t need any new deodorant.”

“Uh, thanks,” Steve said, amused.

“This is the stuff Mommy uses in my hair,” Cassie chimed in as she picked up a citrus-based shampoo bar and held it up to him. “It smells _really_ good.”

“It does,” she watched him agree patiently. “But I really only came in here for shaving cream.”

“Oh, I know where that is,” Morgan said, putting her hand easily in his and pulling him along with her to the far wall. Darcy was able to see they’d fetched him a basket and he was apparently leaving with new shampoo and conditioner along with a bottle of lavender bug spray.

She was about to follow them when the door opened loudly and Reed Richards stormed in. “Ms. Owens,” he blustered his way over to where she’d landed behind the counter. “I need to talk to you about this product you sold my wife.”

Darcy sighed, pretending she didn’t see the way Steve had turned from the shaving cream displays. “How can I help you, Reed?”

“Well, for one thing, I have no idea how you can sell this stuff and say it’s both topical _and_ edible. That’s just confusing.”

“Mmm,” she nodded, forcing herself to focus.

“For another, I don’t care how you’re supposed to use this, your product doesn’t work.” He reached into his pocket and removed a pot she had sold his wife over a month ago. “She’s still not pregnant. I don’t know how much she’s supposed to eat, but it’s just not working—”

Darcy help up a hand and scrunched her face before she sighed again. “Okay, well it’s not working because _she_ is not the one who is supposed to be eating it.”

His eyebrows shot up. “I’m supposed to? But if she’s—”

“It’s topical for her, Reed. It’s edible for _you_ ,” she raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to get her hint before she frowned. “I know I explained this to Susan when she bought it. Didn’t she tell you?”

Reed‘s cheeks and neck had turned bright red as he stammered for a moment before he coughed. “I didn’t… believe her.”

“Well,” Darcy said, wishing she hadn’t noticed the way Steve’s jaw clenched as he tried to smother a smile. “You should.”

Reed coughed again and took back the jar. “Thank you, Ms. Owens,” he managed before he darted from the shop as quickly as he’d come.

Darcy shook her head as she continued over to where Cassie and Morgan were wearing identical grins. “Ladies,” she said with a lift of her eyebrows. “Playing personal shopper?”

To her surprise, they only started to giggle and promptly abandoned their posts on either side of Steve, leaving the two of them standing together. Making a note to figure what that was about later, Darcy crossed her arms over her chest. “Was there something I could help you with?” she asked, expecting another interrogation. She’d been practicing her story, working her stomach into a knot at the thought of having to speak to him again.

“Uh, no,” he shrugged easily. “I just came in for some supplies…” he motioned around the store before his hand landed on the jar of bath salt sachets.

She quirked an eyebrow at his attempt at casual. “You having problems with menstrual cramps?” she asked nodding to the description of the PMS-battling blend of salts and essential oils he had been about to grab.

He followed her indication and she caught the way the tops of his ears turned red as he shook his head. “Uh, not since I switched to a different kind of birth control.”

She fought the urge to laugh, telling herself that she didn’t find him funny. “Are you planning on staying in town longer?” she asked, glancing down at the basket again. “Long enough to need supplies, at least?”

He moved a broad shoulder. “Gotta go where my investigation takes me. And sometimes that means I’ve gotta stay where it takes me too.”

“Mmm,” she nodded again, keeping her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

Steve looked at her curiously. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you rather I not shop here? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable—”

“You’re not making me uncomfortable,” she said almost instantly. But he _was_ making her uncomfortable. Having him hang around and act like he hadn’t been interviewing the whole town about her family was more than uncomfortable. It was infuriating. “Shop wherever you want, I don’t care.”

“Okay,” he offered a half smile she didn’t return. “I will.”

“Great,” she turned away from him as a new customer walked in and waved for her attention. “Hey, Madelyne,” she greeted the redhead as Steve made his way to Jemma over at the register. “How can I help you?”

“Well, I don’t know if this is something you could do,” her customer began carefully. “But my ex-husband is coming to town next weekend.”

“Okay…”

Madelyne Pryor’s face twisted in thought. “Do you have something that I could…say…spray in his face so he’d just…wander off into the woods and never come back? Or something like that,” she rushed on when Darcy’s expression lifted in surprise. “It doesn’t have to be a spray. It could be a kind of tea or soap or…hell, an enema, I don’t care.” She looked thoughtful again.” Is this maybe something I should ask Natasha about?”

“Maybe,” Darcy agreed evenly. “But I’m not sure she’s going to have a recipe for a relocation enema…and she’s out of town until next week.”

“Rats,” Madelyne said before she sighed. “I’ll figure something out. Thanks anyway,” she waved over her shoulder and trotted out the door as Steve was being handed back his change.

He looked at Darcy and then in the direction Madelyne had gone. “This is a very strange place,” he said, shaking his head as he tucked his wallet into his back pocket. “Never paid this much for shaving cream before,” he muttered under his breath as he opened the door, “in my entire life.”

Daisy leaned against the counter and glanced over at Darcy when Steve had disappeared from sight. “I know he’s like…surveilling you, or whatever, but you’ve gotta admit,” she tilted her head. “He is _very_ well put together.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s not _surveilling_ you,” Jemma jumped in. “I mean…what could you have possibly done?”

She didn’t answer that, but let it twist and needle at her for the rest of the afternoon. By the time she asked Jemma to keep an eye on her girls, she had worked up a nice healthy anger.

There was only one place for out-of-towners to stay when they visited and, with summer nearly over and leaf-peeping season still a month away, the seaside cottage motel had only one occupied room.

Steve looked surprised when he opened the door. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she huffed angrily, allowing herself one word of courtesy before she went on. “Am I under some kind of surveillance?”

His look of surprise stayed on his face. “Should you be?”

“You tell me,” she snapped. “You’re the one trolling the town for dirt on me and the rest of my family.”

Steve studied her again, the way he had in the shop, and for the second time that day she felt like she needed to look away. Like she’d give him too much if she held his gaze for too long. “Do you want to come in?”

It wasn’t the response she was expecting. “Why?”

He shrugged. “It seems like you want to keep yelling at me. Maybe you want to sit down while you do it.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to read his intentions. Looking for how he was waiting for her to slip up and incriminate herself. But she found nothing. No ulterior motives in his invitation. “Fine,” she clipped. “But just for a minute.”

“For one thing,” Steve said after he’d stood aside to let her in and closed the door behind them. “You’re not under surveillance. I’m just trying to get a few things straight about you and your sister—”

“Okay, well then ask me,” she cut him off.

He smiled. “I did. You didn’t seem to want to talk to me. Or,” he reconsidered, “you didn’t seem to know what you wanted to tell me, at least.”

“What else are you looking for?”

“I’d settle for a last name,” he said, wandering over to the desk in the corner of his room. There was a small duffel bag on the foot of the bed, his leather jacket thrown near the pillows, the items he’d purchased from her shop dumped out on the bedspread. Steve picked up his file and flipped a few pages. “I’ve got Lewis, Quill, Owens—”

“Owens is fine,” she said shortly. “Lewis was my father’s last name and Quill was my husband’s.”

She watched his eyes move from his papers to her left hand with its bare ring finger. “Owens it is,” he said quietly. “And you live in that house with your sister, your kids, and your…”

“Cousins,” Darcy answered. “Jane and Natasha. They’re Owens too,” she added. “If that’s…somehow relevant to your investigation.”

“And where are they?”

“Burning Man,” she said, her hand drifted to the bed post and she realized that other than the chair Steve was standing in front of, there was nowhere to sit.

“And have they ever met Brock Rumlow?”

“No,” she said, suddenly too uncomfortable to stay in this small space with Steve and his things taking up too much room. “Y’know what, I don’t think I should be here,” she rubbed at the back of her neck. “I really just came by to tell you that I don’t appreciate you getting the whole town riled up with the same gossip they’ve been spreading for four hundred years and if you want to talk to me about something, then you should come and talk to me.” She started for the door.

Steve got there first and put a hand out to rest on the door frame. “I _do_ want to talk to you, Darcy,” he said, more quietly than she had expected.

He was a little too close. She knew she should take a step back—only she needed to go forward. Out the door. It shouldn’t be so hard to keep walking, she told herself. Steve wasn’t blocking her path. He was just standing beside her.

“I need to talk to you and your sister about what happened with Rumlow,” he went on, reminding her that he was there for a reason. That _she_ was there for a reason that had nothing to do with not wanting to walk out of his room. “There’s a lot about this case that isn’t adding up and I’d really appreciate your help in straightening it out.” He ducked his head to meet her eyes and raised his brow. “Can I come by and talk to you both?”

She felt herself nodding before she could decide if it was a bad idea. “Wanda’s not feeling well,” she said after a moment of hesitation. “So not…” she frowned. “Not tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “Saturday, then?”

“Yeah, Saturday,” she echoed as he turned the handle to let her leave. “Come by around…I don’t know, ten?”

He took half a step back, giving her plenty of space to unglue her feet and step out of the room, back into the muggy evening. “Okay then,” he said when she turned around, hands in her pockets. “It’s a date.”

She blinked. “I…thought it was an interview?”

“Yeah,” she thought she caught the tops of his ears turn red again. “That’s what I meant. Not a date.”

She had to bite back a smile at the flustered way he shook his head before he waved a hand and closed the door.

It wasn’t until the door had closed completely that she realized what she’d just done. Invited a US Marshal to her home. Where she had committed a murder.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast interrogation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of things start to break down here. Get ready...your sleep-deprived author is looking to pile on the angst starting riiiiight about..now

There was something wrong with Wanda.

Darcy knew that, of course, because she knew her sister better than anyone. And perhaps if they weren’t trying to cover up a murder, ignore all the signs of a haunting, and lie to the authorities about the dead body in their backyard, she would have been able to see exactly what it was.

But they _were_ trying to cover up a murder, and ignore the signs of a haunting, and lie to the authorities; and on top of that, Darcy was trying to run her business and take care of two rambunctious daughters who were doing their best to drive her as crazy as possible before they had to go back to school.

And so, Darcy hadn’t noticed anything beyond Wanda asking if she minded that she stayed home from work Thursday and Friday. She’d made her tea before she left in the morning and made rosemary chicken soup for dinner one night and grilled cheese the next—all the usual things she did when anyone in the house was sick.

She couldn’t have noticed much more because Wanda hadn’t told her.

She hadn’t told her about the nightmares that had begun waking her up in the middle of the night—the ones where she thought she was awake and someone was standing in the corner of her room, watching her. Or the bruises on her legs and her upper arms that had appeared without cause. Or the way something felt like it was pulling her out of bed each night with a whisper against her skin, shuffling her feet against the hardwood until she found herself in the kitchen, staring out into the dark expanse of the backyard.

If Darcy had been awake, she would have found Wanda downstairs for a fifth night in a row, having opened her eyes as her hand touched the handle of the back door, unaware of how she’d gotten there. She would have watched Wanda squint into the darkness before she turned back, made her way into the living room, and blew a gentle flame onto a wick of the candle on the coffee table.

“Are you here?” she would have heard her sister whisper, her eyes moving around the room searching for a hint of movement, a shadow that would confirm her fears. Wanda’s skin prickled with nerves and she swallowed against her dry throat. “Brock,” she said softly, steeling herself to continue. “You’re not welcome in this house,” she went on. “You need to leave us alone or we’ll get rid of you ourselves.”

If Darcy had been awake, she would have heard the way Wanda gasped as she felt the light touch of breath beside her ear before the flame in front of her went out. As if someone had blown it out.

But Darcy was asleep upstairs.

And Wanda was downstairs, watching the smoke from the extinguished candle curl gracefully upward.

Awake and not alone.

***

On the other hand, Wanda found herself thinking early the next morning as she flipped through the spell book with purpose, it was a good thing that her sister had so much else to focus on. It made what she needed to do that much easier and, she told herself, once Mr. US Marshal was out of their hair, she could tell her what had happened the night before. They could figure it out together.

But she just needed him gone first.

“What are you doing?” Cassie appeared at her side, followed closely by Morgan. Their eyes went wide at the same time at the sight of the massive book opened on the counter. “Are you doing a spell?”

“Shh,” Wanda held a finger to her lips. It was so early for them to be awake—barely after five. The sky had only just started to turn a light, silver blue as the kettle on the stove began to whistle. “This is a secret, okay? We can’t tell Mommy.”

“It’s okay,” Morgan whispered as Wanda got up to fix her tea. “We don’t talk to Mommy about magic. It makes her sad.”

“But we can help,” Cassie added. “We help Auntie Nat sometimes. And Aunt Jane when she lets us.” She shook her head again. “But we don’t tell Mom.”

She debated for a long moment before she nodded quickly. “Okay, you can help me get the ingredients.”

They were good little gatherers. Cassie knew the greenhouse and the garden inside and out and brought back the fresh herbs and flowers much faster than Wanda would have been able to find them on her own. Morgan was more easily distracted and had a tendency to continue rummaging through the drawers in the pantry after she’d found and delivered what her aunt requested.

“Blue eyes that tell me what he’s thinking…” she said slowly, drawing Wanda’s attention away from her mortar and pestle. “And can flip pancakes in the air.” Wanda turned to find Morgan had climbed up onto the counter with a worn little leather-bound book in her hand. She had flipped to a page and was reading slowly, deliberately, out loud. She looked up with her face crinkled in thought. “What’s this, Aunt Wanda?”

Wanda smiled and looked over the top of the book, making sure she was right before she answered. “That’s your mom’s spell book from when she was a little girl.”

“Did she make this spell about Daddy?” Morgan asked.

“Uh-huh,” Wanda lied before she could stop herself.

Cassie had appeared again next to her sister and read the words in the book. Her brow furrowed. “But Daddy had green eyes,” she said, once her eyes had skimmed the page. “And he only ever made us waffles.”

“And they never had fireworks on his birthday,” Morgan added.

Wanda frowned and turned back to her nieces. “You know what?” she asked, taking the book gently from Morgan’s hands. “You’re right. This spell isn’t about your daddy. Your mom wrote this spell a long, long time before she ever met him.”

“Who was it about?” Cassie asked, her head tilted with curiosity.

“No one,” Wanda answered honestly. “She wrote it about a guy she dreamed up—someone who didn’t exist, so that she’d never fall in love.” She closed the book and helped Morgan down. “But luckily, she _did_ fall in love with your daddy and she had you two so it’s a good thing that spell didn’t work, huh?”

“Have you ever been in love, Aunt Wanda?” Morgan asked.

Her smile felt sadder this time even as she tried to laugh at the question. “Too many times,” she answered. “And I just fell harder and harder each time.”

“Who caught you?”

Cassie’s question stopped her before she could return to her spell. Wanda bit her lip and turned back to the girls. She reached out and pushed Cassie’s bangs back from her face. “Your mom did,” she answered honestly. “She caught me every time.” She cleared her throat and forced herself to brighten. “Which is why we’re doing this,” she pointed to the ingredients laid out on the counter. “Because Mommy needs some help getting rid of a problem and we’re just giving him a push in the right direction.”

The girls exchanged a glance. “Do you mean that policeman?” Morgan asked. When Wanda nodded, they looked distraught. “But we like him!”

“And Mom likes him too,” Cassie added.

“I know,” Wanda assured them. “But just because we like someone doesn’t mean he’s good for us, okay? Trust me, everything will be much better once he’s not around.”

If Wanda had been paying closer attention, she would have seen the second glance her nieces exchanged—the one that said they didn’t quite believe her.

***

“Mommy you look so pretty!” Morgan said as Darcy descended the stairs.

She glanced down at the sundress she’d put on—after changing her clothes six different times for absolutely no reason—and smiled. “Thank you,” she said before she looked from Morgan to Cassie. “So do you two,” she added, noting that they’d both already brushed their hair and teeth. “Why so dressed up?” They were wearing dresses that their aunts had purchased for them in New York.

“Aunt Wanda said we’re having company for breakfast,” Cassie said sweetly.

“Can we have pancakes?” Morgan asked as Darcy reached for the carafe of coffee that Wanda had already brewed.

“Uh, yeah,” Darcy said as she moved to the refrigerator for the creamer. “Pancakes sound good. And sweetie, I’m sure he’s not going to stay for breakfast.” She said the words out loud more for her own benefit than for Cassie’s. This wasn’t a social call, she had reminded herself. This was just someone looking for information.

About a crime.

A crime that she had committed.

“Did you say pancakes?” Wanda asked, rounding the corner from the dining room.

“I did,” Darcy said, giving her sister a closer look. “How are you feeling?” Without waiting for an answer, Darcy put her hand on Wanda’s forehead and swiped it down to her cheek.

Wanda smiled. “Feeling better, Mom,” she said before she ducked away. “We must all have pancakes on the brain. I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I made some raspberry syrup.”

“Great,” Darcy shrugged, not catching the way her daughters looked at each other as she started gathering what she’d need for breakfast.

The batter had been mixed, the griddle set to medium, and Wanda had excused herself upstairs for a shower by the time the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” Cassie exclaimed and darted for the door before Darcy could stop her.

She heard Steve’s voice from the front of the house and felt an entirely inconvenient stutter in her chest.

“Do you want to see the greenhouse?” Cassie asked. “And do you want to stay for breakfast? We’re having pancakes.”

“Oh…well, I just came to talk to your mom,” she heard Steve say hesitantly.

“Good! She’s having pancakes too. You can talk to her after you eat.”

“That’s really nice,” Steve was saying, looking down at Cassie with a smile when Darcy arrived in the foyer. “But your mom probably doesn’t want anyone crashing your breakfast.” He glanced up and blinked before he offered her a smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Her stomach did an impressive acrobatic routine while she managed a smile and shrugged. “I don’t mind if you want to stay.” Like this was no big deal. Like they did this all the time. Because she couldn’t really say _no_ , she told herself. That would look suspicious.

“Mom, you should show him the greenhouse,” Cassie said as she closed the door behind Steve.

It felt as safe a place as any for the conversation she was about to lie her way through.

“I was actually going to ask to see it anyway,” Steve admitted when she nodded and motioned for him to follow her.

“Any particular reason?” Darcy asked while they crossed through the living room and dining room.

“Mostly curious.”

She didn’t quite believe him as she pushed open the glass door and invited him to go ahead of her. She watched his eyes roam the room as he reached blindly into his jacket pocket. Having her suspicion confirmed tasted a lot more like panic than usually did to be right.

“Mostly curious,” she repeated skeptically, waiting for him to take out a pair of handcuffs or at least the recording device he’d just used to capture her confession on tape.

The confession she must surely have uttered somewhere between there and the door.

“And hoping you can tell me what this is?” he removed a small glass jar from his pocket. It had a cork and a peeling paper label she didn’t bother to squint at as she took it from his hand.

“It’s belladonna,” she said, popping the cork for a quick inhale, confirming what she knew at a glance. “It’s a natural sedative, people put it in their tea to help them sleep. Sometimes it’s called night shade.”

“Deadly nightshade,” Steve corrected, his voice remarkably even while he turned his attention back to the herbs she’d hung to dry a few nights before. “And some people use it as a poison.”

“Hmm, which people do that?” Darcy asked, crossing her arms over her chest as took a few steps toward him to lean her hip against the table.

Steve looked up, a hint of a smile stuck in the corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Witch people do that.” He lifted his brow. “Witches.”

“Ah ha,” Darcy managed a sardonic half-smile even as her heart sank. “Guess you found me out.” There was a sad, quiet realization lingering in the back of her mind that there was more than one reason she’d been hoping Steve wouldn’t buy into everything he’d been told in town. That she’d wanted him to just see her as herself, not the way everyone else did—a freak, an outcast, tied to all the worst things that had ever happened on the island—the source of everyone’s problems.

“I don’t know what I found,” he said, shaking his head.

“You should come back around Halloween,” she said lightly. “You’d be in for a real treat then—we all jump off the roof and fly.” She waited for Steve to look back at her before she added, not caring that her tone had grown colder. “We kill our husbands, too. Anyone tell you that?”

“Yeah,” he nodded slowly. “They did.” He tilted his head to one side as she made her way slowly around the prep table. “You realize how strange this all sounds, don’t you? I mean, I’ve got people telling me you’re here cooking up sheep placentas, that you’re all secretly three hundred years old, stories about cats being sacrificed and devil worship—”

“Oh, low hanging fruit,” she clucked her tongue. “There’s no devil in what we do.”

“And what is that you…do?”

“That I do?” she repeated. “I…make luxury bath products out of natural ingredients.”

“Mmhmm,” he placed a hand on the table.

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “Soaps and moisturizers, expensive shaving cream—pretty boring stuff, compared to what I’m sure you’ve been hearing.” She stopped a few feet away from him—it felt like a safe enough distance that she could breathe without inhaling whatever it was that made him smell so good. “Wanda gives bad palm readings and Natasha meddles in people’s love lives and Jane’s a naturopathic doctor.”

He nodded again. “So, you’re telling me nothing that any of you do is magic?”

“Depends on your definition of magic, I guess.” She absently reached out to straighten the array of gardening tools. “It’s not all spells and hexes—it’s about the power of belief.” When she glanced up, he was closer than before. She couldn’t remember which one of them had moved, but he was close enough now that she reached her hand into his jacket and pulled out his badge. “Like this?” She held it up so the silver glinted in the sun coming through the glass ceiling. “It’s just a symbol,” she shrugged. “Your talisman. It’s not made from any kind of…indestructible metal or anything, right? It can’t stop the bad guys in their tracks,” she bit back a smile at the idea. “But it has power because you believe it does. Because you believe in what it stands for.” She tucked it back into his pocket before he could respond. The inside of his jacket was warm—his body radiated heat. She bit her lip and looked up to meet his gaze as she dropped her hand. “It’s a shame you can’t believe in me.”

This close to him, she could see how blue his eyes were. His long eyelashes. The way his throat moved when he swallowed. She forced herself to look away, to step back and away from him, to return to the house where there were kids and sisters and other things to distract her from the force pulling her toward Steve.

“Darcy,” his voice stopped her in the doorway, forced her to turn around. “Can you please just tell me the truth. Are you or your sister hiding Brock Rumlow?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not in this house.”

He took a deep breath before he asked his next question. “Did you or your sister kill Brock Rumlow?”

“Oh yeah,” she said before she could stop herself. “Couple times.”

The oven was splattered in pancake batter when they arrived back in the kitchen. Morgan had pulled a chair to stand over the pan, getting ready to pour out another misshapen blob. “Morgan Meredith Owens,” Darcy shook her head as she approached her daughter. “Could you have made more of mess?”

“Mommy, I’m cooking.”

“I can see that,” she said, reaching for a towel to run under the faucet to scrub at some of the batter stuck to Morgan’s arms. There was a stack of partially burned, uneven shapes of what might be considered pancakes with enough syrup on a plate beside the stove top. “Where is your sister?”

“She took the plates outside so we can eat in the garden.”

She sucked in a steadying inhale. “That’s a recipe for a stack of broken dishes,” she said under her breath before she glanced up at Steve, who was already standing beside Morgan, watching her mix more batter. “Would you mind keeping an eye on her?”

He looked up, surprised for a moment before he shrugged. “Sure,” he said and then looked back at Morgan. “How about you pour, and I flip?”

She beamed. “Okay!”

Darcy put aside how easy that was, how normal the two of them looked at the stove together, how if this was any other circumstance, she’d be pinching herself. She made her way out to the garden where, to her surprise, Cassie had successfully set the table for five. The forks were on the wrong side, but everything was unbroken and looked pleasant in the last summer morning. “Thanks for the help, Cass,” she said, pulling her daughter over to her side for a hug. “This looks great.”

“Cassie!” Morgan cried when they’d returned to the kitchen. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed with excitement. “Steve knows how to flip pancakes in the air!”

Cassie’s face lit up and she raced over to stand on Steve’s other side. “Can I see?”

Darcy turned to rummage in the drawers of the curio cabinet for enough cloth napkins as she heard the newest barrage of questions her daughters were lobbing Steve’s way.

“Do you have a gun?” Cassie asked after they’d poured a new circle of batter into the pan.

“Yes.”

“Do you have it on you right now?”

“One of them,” he said easily.

“Can we see it?”

“Nope.”

“When’s your birthday?” Morgan asked. Darcy found the stack of napkins and dislodged them from the drawer.

“The fourth of July,” he answered. “When’s yours?”

“January twenty-first,” Morgan answered at the same time as Cassie said, “November third.”

“Do you always get to watch the fireworks on your birthday?” Cassie asked while Steve ran a spatula along the edge of the pancake, checking for doneness.

“Girls,” Darcy called over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs. “Enough with the third-degree.” Wanda was half-dressed when Darcy reached her room, in a pair of shorts and her bra, staring at something in the center of her bed. “Everything okay?”

A line of concern had appeared between Wanda’s brows as she shook her head slowly. “I don’t…know…” Before Darcy could ask what she meant, Wanda raised her hand and spread her fingers wide, directing her energy at her bed where Darcy could see a book was resting. Darcy watched with wary curiosity, waiting for the familiar crackle of red sparks from between Wanda’s fingers. For the book to jump from its resting place and begin flipping pages or fly to its rightful place on the shelf.

But nothing happened.

No sparks. No glow of crimson power from Wanda’s palm. The book did not move.

Wanda dropped her arm. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said frankly, a deep frown settling on her face. “I can’t—” she shook her head. “The last few days it just seems like it’s harder and harder to do anything—”

Darcy crossed all the way into the room and touched Wanda’s shoulder, turning her from the stationary book. “Hey,” she said softly. “It’s okay. It’s probably nothing.”

“No, it’s definitely not—”

“Breakfast is ready!” Cassie’s voice carried up the stairs.

Darcy put her arm all the way around Wanda’s shoulders. “Just put a shirt on and come downstairs. We’ll eat, we’ll lie to the cops some more, and then we’ll figure out what’s going on with you.”

Every part of that sounded easier than Darcy knew it was going to be. The amount of problems she was incapable of solving on her own were starting to pile up. The lies she was going to have to tell Steve to get him to leave, the lie she was telling herself that she _wanted_ him to leave, the way she’d tasted nothing but hot, sticky, metallic dread in the back of her throat since Wanda had opened the door of her house in New Mexico, the roses that grew thicker and more formidable each time she looked at them, and now this…

She was starting to wonder if the urge to throw up from everything racing between her head and her heart was ever going to go away.

Luckily, Wanda was all smiles by the time she descended the stairs. Darcy had made her way out into the garden where Steve was setting down a plate of pancakes and Cassie was holding something out to her sister across the table.

“Look,” she said in a loud whisper, holding up Steve’s badge. “A star!”

Darcy pulled it from her hand. “This is not yours,” she reminded before she tucked a napkin into Cassie’s collar and set the badge on the chair where Steve had hung his jacket.

“Oh, they’re not going to hurt it,” Steve said with a smile as Darcy crossed behind him to tuck a second napkin into the front of Morgan’s dress.

She turned back around, moving at the same time as Steve so that her chest bumped into his. “Uh,” she laughed nervously as they both moved left, and then right, trying to get out each other’s way. “Here,” she took the remaining cloth napkin and tucked it into his shirt collar. “If you’re anything like my girls—that nice white shirt is going to need a shield.”

“Good morning everyone,” Wanda chirped, sounding far more cheerful than she had upstairs as she stepped out from the house in her bare feet, holding a small white pitcher. “Steve, nice to see you—I can call you Steve, can’t I?”

Darcy took advantage of Steve glancing in Wanda’s direction to step away from him again. He smiled politely. “That’s fine,” he assured her as they picked seats at the remaining empty chairs.

“I told Darcy we all must have woken up with pancakes on the brain,” she went on, echoing her earlier words as she sat down beside Morgan. “I made some raspberry syrup this morning.” She held out the white pitcher. “It might be a little sweet, but you’ve gotta try it. I’ve never heard any complaints.”

Steve had just reached for the pitcher when Cassie suddenly bolted up in her chair. “Wait!” she cried, her fingers splayed out.

Morgan’s eyes went wide, and she jumped up next. “No, not that!” she exclaimed and seized the pitcher from Wanda before Steve could take it.

“What is wrong with you two?” Darcy admonished, looking from one daughter to the other as they pushed away from the table and took off. “Hey!” she called after them.

But Wanda had shoved her chair back first and took off, calling their names even as they ignored her and pushed open the back gate. By the time Darcy and Steve had stood up, following slowly behind, Cassie and Morgan had trampled down the wooden stairs and made it all the way down to the water’s edge.

“What in the—” Darcy cut herself off with a surprised laugh as Morgan hurled the pitcher into the bay with a surprising amount of force for a seven-year-old before she and her sister high-fived and cheered as the tide took it out to sea. She looked over at Steve, who had watched with a look of confused amusement and smiled. “Guess they didn’t want you eating _that_.”

Steve’s smile broadened and he opened his mouth to say something when a different sound interrupted him.

A clinking sound. Tinny and high-pitched. Metal on stone.

With her face wrinkled in confusion, Darcy turned as Wanda returned to her side, out of breath, to see one of the cats was pouncing and batting at something along the walkway. His fur stood up on end as he smacked at it with his paw, his large teeth bared with a hiss.

Steve approached slowly. “Is he okay?” he asked over his shoulder.

Darcy shrugged. “I think so?” she took a few steps closer, squinting in the sun to see what the animal was so concerned about. “He’s not usually—” she stopped as Steve bent down to pick up the small, gold trinket that had the cat so worked up.

Her heart plummeted to her knees as Steve held it between his fingers and studied it with narrow, discerning eyes. It was a heavy, gold signet ring. Embossed with a skull and crossbones. The same ring that had torn the delicate skin around Wanda’s right eye when she’d been punched. The same ring the man who’d punched her had still been wearing when Darcy had bashed his head in. The same ring she knew he’d been wearing when they buried him thirty feet away from where Steve was standing.

He looked up at her, any trace of amusement gone from his face. “You want to explain this?”

“Explain what?” Wanda asked breathlessly, holding out her hand. “That’s my ring. The cat must have stolen it off my dresser.” Darcy felt her face burn as her throat ran dry. Wanda looked from Steve to the cat and clucked her tongue. “Bad kitty,” she admonished before she shrugged. “Can I have it back, please?”

“Can you have it…” Steve repeated faintly before he let out a joyless chuckle. “No, Miss Owens, you can’t have it back, because this is not your ring. It’s Brock Rumlow’s ring and I don’t know how stupid the two of you think I am but—”

“We don’t—” Darcy started to argue but the words died on her tongue, dissolving into the shame and guilt already lingering there.

He shook his head as he tucked the signet ring into his pocket. “You both should do yourselves a favor and find a damn good lawyer before you say anything else.” He looked from Wanda to Darcy and back again as he grabbed his jacket and badge from the table. “Don’t make this any worse by trying to leave town.” He’d made it halfway down the path to his car before he stopped and turned back around. “And thank your girls for getting rid of that syrup,” he said with another shake of his head as he continued down the walkway. “God only knows what was in it…”

Wanda dropped into his empty chair, head in her hands, as his car pulled away and Darcy was trying to remember how to breathe.

“Where did Steve go?” Cassie asked when she and Morgan returned, still flushed from their celebration by the water.

“He had to leave,” Darcy heard Wanda say, numbly, before she got up and walked back inside.

Cassie and Morgan looked at each other, matching expressions of concern. “Was he mad because we stole the syrup?” Morgan asked, her question jolting Darcy out of her daze.

She shook her head and knelt down to be at eye level with them both. “Of course not,” she said seriously. “He just had to go to work, okay?”

They looked at each other again and Darcy was reminded with a pang of all the time she and Wanda had spoken volumes to one another without saying a word. Cassie bit her lip. “Mom…if we tell you something, do you promise not to be mad?”

She had always hated that question. She hated having to promise a reaction without knowing what was coming next. But she looked at the concern written on both of their faces and she nodded before she stood up and beckoned for them to follow her to the table. “What is it?”

They sat down together, small enough to share a single chair. Morgan chewed her bottom lip while Cassie twisted her dark hair around her finger before she spoke. “We helped Aunt Wanda this morning…” she said hesitantly. “With a spell.”

Darcy blinked and she clenched her jaw, reminding herself what she’d just promised her daughters. “What kind of spell?”

Morgan chewed harder on her lip. “The kind that would make Steve go away,” she said quietly.

“But we don’t want him to go away,” Cassie rushed on. “He’s nice. And we like him.”

“That’s why we took the syrup,” Morgan added. “Because if he ate it, he would have to go away. And we want him to stay. Because his—” she stopped herself with a thoughtful frown.

Darcy tilted her head. “Because what, honey?”

Cassie looked at her sister and nodded encouragingly. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “Tell her what you told me.”

“Because his heart sounds like yours, Mommy,” Morgan admitted. “I wasn’t trying to listen,” she went on quickly. “I heard it by accident. But it’s just the same as yours and yours doesn’t sound so sad when he’s around and I just...” she stopped with another pensive pout. “It just doesn’t feel like he’s supposed to go away.”

“I know we’re not supposed to do spells,” Cassie said, her eyes downcast. “But we wanted to help…and then we didn’t want to help so we tried to fix it…” she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Morgan said quietly.

Darcy swallowed around her dry throat and pounding heart, feeling as though she was being held under water. This was too much, every cell in her body was insisting. This was all too much.

She reached out both hands to rest one on each of their faces, pulling their eyes back to hers. “Hey,” she said softly. “Look at my face. I’m not mad, okay?” She forced back the rush of emotion that stung her nose and managed a small smile. “Thank you for telling me the truth,” she leaned forward to kiss them both. “That’s a very brave thing to do.”

“Can we go inside?” Cassie asked. “I don’t feel hungry anymore.”

“No, neither do I,” Darcy agreed, shaking her head. “Go ahead.”

She waited until she heard them traipse up the stairs inside before she picked up as many of the unused dishes as she could and returned to the kitchen where Wanda was rummaging through her purse. Darcy clenched her jaw and went straight to the trash, dumping the whole plate of pancakes into the nearly empty bag. She felt Wanda’s eyes on her as she set the plates in the sink and turned to get the rest.

“Well go on,” Wanda said before she could reach the door. “Say what you want to say.”

She sighed, reminding herself that she didn’t need to fight with her only real ally when they desperately needed to stay together. “What do you want me to say, Wanda? You want me to ask you _how_ irresponsible you could be to try _another_ spell to get us out of this? Or ask for an explanation of what _you_ think is going on here? Do you have any idea what we should do?” she dropped the hand she’d been gesturing with and shook her head. “Because I don’t. I’m out of ideas.”

“I was _trying_ to fix this!” Wanda exclaimed. “And if you’re going to put what just happened all on me—”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh of course not…”

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore than you do, Darcy! I can’t even think straight any more, I’m not sleeping and I’m—”

“I, I, I,” Darcy muttered under her breath. “Me-me-me, Jesus Christ, Wanda is that all you ever think about? Yourself?”

It was Wanda’s turn to roll her eyes as she turned away. “I don’t need this right now…”

“Hey!” Darcy snapped, charging back after her. “Don’t you walk away from me! After everything that I have done and risked for you—” she shook her head feeling all the fear and guilt and anger and disgust bubbling faster than she could choke it back. “God, I am so _sick_ of cleaning up your messes.”

“That’s right,” Wanda let the glass in her hand fall and shatter on the hardwood. “That’s all I am. Just one big mess! Your cross to bear,” she scoffed. “At least I’ve lived my life.”

“Oh please—”

“No, I have! And you’ve _always_ been jealous of me for that. Because you wasted yours here, trying to take care of everyone. Trying to fix everything and fit in and be normal and guess what?” she threw both hands up. “You’re never gonna fit in, Darcy! You’re never gonna be normal! Because we are different and so are your girls—”

She stood up from where she’d bent to pick up the broken glass. “You leave them out of this,” she warned. “I mean it, Wanda,” she said seriously. “Leave. Them. Out of this.”

“Why?” Wanda asked, an unfamiliar glint in her eye. “Worried they’re going to realize they don’t have to live a pathetic, safe little life like you?”

“Get out,” Darcy barked. “I am done with your bullshit. I want you out of here.”

Wanda rolled her eyes again and Darcy felt a violent urge to smack her. “You don’t want me gone,” she scoffed again. “I’m the only thing that makes your life interesting.”

“Enough,” Darcy abandoned the glass and turned away from her sister. “I’m done with this.”

“Done with what?” Wanda demanded, chasing after her as she wound through the house and grabbed her purse and keys. “No, Darcy,” she seized her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“I am doing what I have wanted to do since the very beginning,” she said, shrugging her off roughly.

“You are _not_ telling him the truth,” Wanda insisted fiercely.

“Y’know, it’s funny how you only want me to be true to myself when it benefits you,” she said. “The _only_ thing I have wanted to do since the second that man walked into this house is tell him the truth. So yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“You’re just going to blow up both of our lives?” Wanda asked in disbelief. “What do you think is going to happen, Darcy? That he’s going to understand? Tell you don’t worry about it?”

“I don’t care what he says or does,” she snapped back, though she knew that was a lie. “Anything is better than feeling like this.”

She didn’t want to wait for another word from her sister. Darcy turned away and slammed the front door on her way out.

Steve hadn’t made it all the way back to his room yet by the time Darcy caught up to him. “It was Brock’s ring,” she called across the small courtyard of the motel.

Steve turned around and shook his head when he noticed her.

“I know you know that,” she said, crossing the lawn. “But I needed to tell you myself.”

He put his key in the door. “I’m serious, Darcy,” he warned. “You need to get a lawyer before you say anything else.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t want a lawyer,” she said. A lawyer might help her stay out of prison, but he would also tell her to shut up. He’d keep her from talking to Steve and getting all of this off her chest. “I just want…” she dropped her shoulders. “I just want you to stop looking at me like…”

“Like what?” he challenged. “Like I know you’re lying to me? Because I know you’re lying to me—I just don’t know about what, exactly.”

“I know,” she admitted. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t want to lie anymore.”

He looked at her for what felt like a long time before he exhaled heavily. “Alright,” he said and unlocked the door. “Come in.”

The room was messier than the last time she was there. The bed still unmade, three different shirts thrown across the rumpled sheets. It smelled more like him, too. Like whatever he wore that clung to him and lingered when he left a room. Darcy looked away from the messy bed; it felt too intimate, somehow. Too personal.

“Sorry,” he muttered, inching past her to pile the shirts at the foot of the bed before he moved over to the desk and gathered the papers, photos, and notes that were scattered everywhere into a single, neat pile. “Wasn’t expecting guests.”

On top of the pile, Darcy saw a folded piece of paper. Notebook paper, faded words written in purple pen. She picked it up, already knowing what it was. “How many times did you read this?” she asked, unfolding her letter to Wanda. It was so worn it felt almost like cloth. The edges were starting to tear at the creases of the folds.

Steve looked up from where he’d been quickly tidying up the rest of his space. “Once or twice,” he said, glancing back down. “Have to study all the evidence.”

She looked at the paper again and then up at him. The careful way he was avoiding her eyes. The way he’d looked almost embarrassed when he’d mentioned it the first time. “But I sent this before Wanda ever called me,” she said. “What evidence could you have found in my letter?”

Steve coughed and straightened back up to his full height. He pulled out the only chair in the room and motioned to it. “Have a seat,” he said before he produced a small recorder from his duffel bag and used the wide windowsill as a place to perch. He flicked it on and cleared his throat again. “Testimony of Darcy Owens,” he stated after the date and time. “Ms. Owens has waived her right to counsel at this time.” He set the recorder on the table in front of her and looked up. “Okay, go ahead.”

She wet her lips nervously. “Where do you want me to start?”

He shrugged. “Easy stuff first. Tell me where Brock Rumlow is.”

She inhaled steadily. “I think he’s in the spirit world.”

Steve blinked. Not the easy answer he’d been expecting. “You think he’s dead.”

“More than that, I think he’s haunting us,” she said evenly. “And by extension, he’s haunting you, too.”

“Haunting you,” Steve repeated. “You and Wanda? Because you’re the ones who killed him?”

Darcy swallowed hard and shook her head. “Wanda didn’t kill anybody,” she said softly.

He nodded and ducked his head, trying to meet her eyes. “Wanda didn’t kill anybody,” he echoed. “Wanda didn’t….but you did?” She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about Cassie and Morgan and how they weren’t going to understand why she was doing this. All the bedtime tuck-ins and scrunched-nose kisses she was going to miss. How she’d just told them it was the brave thing to do, but if she told the truth now, she’d spend the rest of her life without them. “Did you, Darcy?” Steve prompted gently.

When she opened her eyes, she saw he’d leaned forward, his elbow on the table, his hand close enough to touch. His face was open, painted with more concern than judgment. She pressed her lips together and sat back further in the chair. “If I said that I did,” she began carefully. “What would happen?”

Steve closed his eyes and ran his hand over his face. “Darcy…”

“What would you have to do?” she asked, quieter than before. She bit her lip, the reality of what she was about to do filling her ears with a low buzz that, she knew, would grow to a roar if she didn’t say something soon and break the silence again. “You’d arrest me?” she guessed, waiting for Steve to look at her again before she continued. “You’d send me to prison for the rest of my life because the world is short a man like Brock Rumlow?” Her voice caught on his name. “How is that fair?”

“It’s not about what’s fair,” he said, reaching over to shut off the recorder. He stood up and crossed to lean against the bed post. “This isn’t about what I think or feel—it’s not up for you or me to decide how he’s held accountable for what he’s done.”

She stood up too, unable to sit still. “Well, he’s been punished,” she said finally. “Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough to say that he’s never going to hurt another woman like Wanda or Ava Starr or Rachel Leighton ever again?”

Steve’s lips dipped downward before he shook his head. “Darcy that’s not…” he sighed. “That’s not how it works.” He turned to face her. “Look, I know you’re scared of something—and I don’t think it’s me.” He ducked his head again, forcing her to look at him as he took a step closer. Close enough that her hands almost brushed his as she dropped them where she’d crossed them over her chest. “But if you trust me,” he said, selecting his words with care. “If you tell me what’s going on…I promise I’ll do everything I can to keep you—and your sister, and your girls—from getting hurt.”

Darcy felt a lump rise in her throat even as her lips moved to offer him a small, sad smile. “I’m not scared of you, Steve,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

His eyes moved from hers to her lips and back again. He was so close. And she was so scared—but not of him. He was so safe and steady and she had been so good for so long.

She didn’t know who blinked first, but it didn’t matter because before she could draw a breath, Steve’s lips were on hers and a rush of desire poured into her without warning. An instant fire, liquid heat pooling low in her belly, making her legs useless as her knees went weak at his touch. Her arms went around his neck as he pushed her back against the closest wall; her mouth opened beneath his with a moan from deep in her chest. His hands roamed from her back to her waist and finally to her hips, pinning her to the wall with his body while his tongue swept between her lips, teasing against hers.

“Wait—wait,” she breathed against his lips, forcing herself to wrench away from him as reality plowed into the room with them. “I can’t do this.”

He pulled back immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said bracing his hands on either side of her on the wall, far enough back that she could breathe as he dropped his head. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—” He shook his head. “You’re right, we can’t…”

Her hands were still on his shoulders and as she caught her breath, she knew she should move, duck under his arm and put a safe distance between them. But her fingers were still reaching for him, combing into his hair and she was leaning back in and she _couldn’t_ and _he_ couldn’t but she was pulling his face back to hers anyway, soft, tentative kisses on his temple, then the top of his cheek where his eyelashes brushed her skin and finally, her lips fell back to his and it was his turn to moan as his arms went tightly around her, sweeping her up and off her feet, turning them away from the wall. They fell together back onto his bed, her fingers slipping beneath his shirt, her hands greedy for the hard planes of muscle she felt while his kisses meandered from her lips to her jaw and down her neck. He slipped one strap of her dress down as her legs wrapped around his waist and she wriggled against him, threading her hand back into his hair to drag his mouth back to hers. She arched into him when his tongue swept against hers again and she waited to feel that guilt—the salt that came with lust and greed that had kept her from so much in her life. But there was nothing. Steve’s hand slid up her thigh and beneath her dress, holding her hard and tightly against him. Nothing but waves of something sweet and sharp and thrilling…and more right than anything she’d ever felt before.

She pulled away, desperate for a breath and opened her eyes, staring up into his. Blue and wide and open and honest. His face was flushed and his lips full and swollen from hers as she let her thumb drift over his cheek. She felt a soft smile play on her lips and she shook her head slightly. “I think I can read every thought in your head,” she breathed heavily, searching his eyes for something—anything that would tell her she was wrong—that he wasn’t who she’d been waiting for for so long.

But Steve only smiled down at her, a lock of his hair falling into his face as he leaned down and captured her lips in another slow kiss. “That’s fine by me,” he said, pulling back just enough to brush his nose against hers. “I don’t have anything to hide from you.”

She closed her eyes again and let him kiss her once more, holding his face in her hands even as an image floated to the surface of her memory. A bowl of flower petals. A full moon. A little girl sending broken-hearted wishes up to the sky.

_And if he doesn’t exist…I’ll never die of a broken heart._

Steve pulled back the second he felt her stiffen. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly.

Darcy shook her head and pushed at his shoulder. “I can’t—” she said finally, forcing herself up. “I can’t do this—” She couldn’t look at him as he let her go, giving her space to sit up and slide her dress back into place. “I can’t be here,” she mumbled, keeping her eyes on the door as she gathered her things and hurried away from him.

She heard him calling after her until she reached the street while she fought every impulse to turn and run back, push away everything swirling in her head and her heart and lay down in his arms and let whatever happened happen.

But she didn’t stop. And she didn’t turn around. And she didn’t look back until she was far enough away that she couldn’t hear him anymore.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bad day just gets worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think I've watched the scenes this particular chapter is based on about a million times and I just never liked the main action. What's supposed to be scary is just kind of...CW. Like something from an early season of Charmed. Yes, most of this is due to the fact that this delightful film is over 20 years old and the effects just don't hold up. The other part is that it's not supposed to be a genuinely scary movie, so I get why they went in the direction they did.
> 
> However! That doesn't change the fact that I don't like it. So I had to make some edits and frankly, that's why this particular update too so g-damn long. I hope it was worth the wait. I looooove youuuuuu my sweet kittens. Thank you for being so wonderful every step of the way with this and all my other fics.

She could have gone straight home—and when she looked back on that day, she would wish more than anything that she’d gone straight home—but she didn’t. She didn’t want to go home with the taste of Steve still fresh on her lips, with her skin still humming from the way he’d touched and kissed her, her hair a mess and her mind whirling. So, she went to the shore and found a place to sit where she hoped she could clear her head.

The water stared back at her, indifferent to her worries as it lapped at the rocky sand. She watched it for what felt like a long time, trying to think of nothing at all, but only managing to think about how, four hundred years ago, a group of men had tied up Maria, the first witch in her family, and thrown her to the waves to see if she’d float.

She had, of course. And since everyone knows you can’t drown a witch, Darcy remembered the story she had heard a thousand times, they had tried to hang her instead. And after the knot slipped twice, and the fire wouldn’t catch, and the stone crumbled each time one touched her, those men had sent her away. Across the bay to the shore where, four centuries later, her descendant dropped her face into her hands and fought back the urge to cry.

There were dark, heavy clouds gathering overhead and a faint rumble of thunder rolled farther out, over the water. Fittingly, a morning that had started out so pleasant, with a cloudless blue sky and a table set for five, was turning darker and colder by the moment. Vaguely, she wondered how long she would be able to sit there, hiding on the shore, before she had to return home with all the unknowns waiting there.

Brock.

Wanda.

Steve.

It all churned inside of her, making her sick. Making her wish so hard for so many things to be different. Making her wish she had a spell to fix everything—to go back in time and keep Wanda from ever meeting Brock in the first place. To keep herself from ever coming back here after Peter died.

Or go even further back than that. Back to that night in the garden. Keep herself from ever writing that spell—ever speaking it into the universe—ever hoping it could come true.

But what all had she wished for, all those years ago? She kept her eyes closed, trying to remember. Strength…kindness…blue eyes…fireworks…pancakes…

_Mommy_

Cassie’s voice interrupted her thoughts and bolted her upright.

_Mommy, where are you?_

Heart in her throat, Darcy scrambled down the rocks and up the stairs to the promenade. She heard a splashing sound that was nothing to do with the waves below. She could feel Cassie’s fear, her panic; she heard the undeniable sound of Morgan crying as clear and as real as if she was standing in front of her and did her best to push back the realization that she couldn’t hear Wanda at all. The closer she got to the house, the more it all crushed down upon her until she felt like she was trudging through hip-deep water. Each step more arduous than the last. The air around her thick and fighting her every move.

“Please, please, please,” she said under her breath as she climbed the porch steps, unsure of who she was pleading with or what she was even asking for. Her blood pounded in her ears when she crashed through the door and started up the stairs, nearly knocked over with relief when she heard both Cassie and Morgan’s voices from above and heard both of their footsteps racing down the spiral to reach her.

They met on the second landing, both girls hurling themselves into her arms, babbling and sobbing too hard for Darcy to understand them. Only little words made sense. _Aunt Wanda. Water. Bathtub_. “What?” she demanded, pulling back to see that Morgan’s hair was soaked and she was wrapped in a towel. “What happened? What’s going on?” The front of Cassie’s dress and the ends of her hair were wet too, and her knees were already showing the beginnings of dark bruises. “Cassie,” she implored when it was clear Morgan was too upset to be coherent. “What. Happened?”

“Something’s wrong with Aunt Wanda!” Cassie cried, throwing her arms around Darcy’s neck again. “She was holding Morgan’s head underwater!”

Everything in Darcy’s world tilted violently and she reminded herself not to panic, not to scare her daughters any worse than they already were. “What do you mean, honey?” she asked, glancing up the stairs with an unfamiliar chord of fear and distrust pounding in her veins. “What do you mean she was holding her head underwater?”

“She told Morgan to take a bath,” she went on, hiccoughing as Darcy rubbed her back and Morgan’s wheezing sobs finally started to slow. “And—and then—I heard a lot of splashing and I-I went to the bathroom and she was—”

“I couldn’t breathe, Mommy!” Morgan wailed into her shoulder and again, Darcy felt like she might be sick. “She wouldn’t let me go!”

“There’s something really wrong with her, Mom,” Cassie said, pulling back with a fresh wave of tears in her eyes. “Aunt Wanda would never hurt Morgan,” she shook her head fiercely. “She would never do something like that by herself.”

Darcy felt herself nodding and forcing herself to release her grip on her girls. “Take Morgan and go to your room,” she said firmly to Cassie. “You lock the door and don’t open it until you hear me tell you it’s okay, got it?”

“No! Don’t go up there!” Morgan cried with wide eyes that were still red from the soapy water and swollen from her tears.

“Go with Cassie,” she said, pointing to their open bedroom door. “I’ll come get you.”

“You promise?” Morgan’s fingers clenched Darcy’s hair painfully as she tried to pry her child off her left side.

“Yes. I promise I’ll come get you,” she repeated, grateful when Cassie took her sister’s hand and dragged her up the next flight of stairs to their bedroom. Darcy watched the door slam and heard the lock click before she took a steadying inhale and forced her legs to move. Up the stairs, one foot in front of the other, following wet footprints and splashes until she reached the large bathroom on the third floor. 

She heard laughter before she took her first step through the door. Deep and low, coming from the far corner. Coming from Wanda, she realized, stopping just inside the doorway to squint at her sister, half-concealed by the shadows. The sound was coming from Wanda, but it wasn’t Wanda’s laugh. It was too deep. Too cold. And there was something else beneath it. Something low and rattling and inhuman. It chilled the blood in her veins and raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

Darcy swallowed hard and took a shaky breath as Wanda pushed herself up from the chair in the corner and got to her feet. She trailed a hand lazily along the counter. “Are you here to yell at me some more?” she asked, sounding bored. It was almost Wanda’s voice. Almost. If not for what Darcy could hear underneath. That low hiss slithering between the words. “Because that thing with the little one—” her hand waved carelessly in the direction of the girls’ room. “That was just a joke—you all need to lighten up a little bit.”

She steeled herself. “Look at me,” she demanded. Wanda’s head snapped up and caught Darcy’s eyes in the mirror. Her heart stuttered again. The eyes looking back at her were dark. Cold. Completely unfamiliar. Even if they’d been the right color—they couldn’t have been her sister’s.

“What’s wrong?” Wanda taunted, taking a step to come around the copper claw-footed tub in the center of the room. Darcy took a step back, wanting to keep it between them—anything she could use as an obstacle. “I was just trying to help you.”

“Help me?” Darcy repeated faintly. “By killing my kids?”

“I told you, I was just kidding around,” she rolled her eyes. “Although…” she took another step on the wet tile. “If her sister _hadn’t_ come in when she did…” Wanda gave an exaggerated wince. “At least we’d be even, wouldn’t we?”

She swallowed hard and froze when, from down the stairs, she heard the front door bang open. “Darcy?”

Steve’s voice snapped both of their eyes toward the door. They heard his footsteps pounding up the stairs and Darcy let herself feel relieved for one whole second before she realized she’d made a mistake.

In the time it took her to look away from the door, Wanda had advanced from her side of the bathroom and her cold, wet hand seized Darcy’s throat. She sucked in a breath before her back hit the wall and Wanda’s fingers began to squeeze. “He can’t save you,” the voice that both was and wasn’t Wanda’s hissed in her ear. Her grip was too strong—preternaturally strong—she didn’t flinch when Darcy pulled at her arm, scratched and clawed at her hand. “He can’t save you,” she whispered again, her lips right beside Darcy’s ear. “And you can’t save her… I’m never letting her go.” 

Darcy’s lungs were burning. Her eyes were watering and her brain was screaming that she needed to do something— _anything_ —or she was going to die.

She squeezed her eyes shut and brought her knee up hard into Wanda’s solar plexus. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt her, just barely enough to distract her. But it was enough to make her loosen her grip just enough that Darcy could suck in half a breath.

It was all she had time for before the bathroom door banged hard against the wall. Steve was twice Wanda’s size and seized both her arms to pull her hands away from Darcy’s throat. Nearly-black eyes flashed dangerously and Wanda’s teeth nashed with a growl as Darcy sank to the ground coughing and holding her bruised throat, gulping in all the air she could. Wanda’s head snapped back and crashed into Steve’s face, startling him when he tried to subdue her. She pushed away from him with another deep, guttural sound of frustration and put a few feet of space between them.

Steve kept his eyes on Wanda while he bent to the side and offered Darcy his hand. He pulled her up off her knees and pushed her behind him. “What’s going on, Wanda?” he asked carefully, moving slowly to keep himself between Wanda and the door.

But Wanda only shook her head and laughed again. That laugh Darcy had heard before. “Wanda’s not here right now,” she said, the words low and deep enough that Darcy had to believe her. It wasn’t even her voice anymore. Those dark eyes gave Steve a heavy once-over before her lips slid into a smirk. “You look good, Stevo,” she said. “Looking at you is making me a little homesick.”

“How’s that?” Steve asked, his voice remarkably even for someone reaching slowly for the gun on his hip.

“And this is cute,” she ignored his question as she went on, motioning to the way Steve was doing what he could to keep Darcy behind him. “The frigid little witch and her white knight—” she shook her head. “You two are a match made in heaven.” Her nose scrunched in an expression so familiar it made Darcy sick with rage at whatever was controlling her sister, wearing her face like a Halloween mask. “You think Sharon would like her?”

Darcy swallowed down the ball of fury in her throat. “Wanda, please—”

“Hey!” The word was barked at her. Dark eyes flashed again. Fingers snapped like she was a dog. “What did I just say, big sister? _Wanda. Isn’t. Here_ right now.” Wanda’s blonde hair fell into her face as her head shook back and forth. “You Owens girls,” her tongue clucked. “You just don’t listen.” That smirk appeared again. “Stevo, what do you tell a woman with two black eyes?”

Before anyone could say another word, Wanda lunged for Darcy again, hands outstretched. Steve made a move to intercept her, but Wanda only grabbed a handful of his shirt and threw him hard against the wall. Like he weighed nothing at all.

Darcy backed up again on instinct, her hands up to block should Wanda’s fingers try to close around her windpipe again. But when her shoulders slammed into the wall a second time, it was only her face that was taken hold of. Wanda’s long arm pressed down against Darcy’s chest, pinning her in place. “Honestly,” the word was a hiss close to her lips. This close, Darcy could no longer pretend she didn’t know who they were dealing with. If the eyes and the voice hadn’t been enough, she wouldn’t have been able to ignore the sickly taste that clung in the back of her throat. Sharp. Bitter. Rotten. Everything she’d felt about Brock the first moment she’d met him. He squeezed her cheeks with Wanda’s fingers, digging her sister’s nails into her jaw. “This is all a little more trouble than you’re worth, blue eyes.” Darcy twisted her head from side-to-side trying to free herself from his grip. “You don’t have to fight so hard,” he hissed through Wanda’s clenched teeth. “You know I’m going to get what I want eventually.”

Before Darcy could move or wrench away enough to speak, every light bulb in the bathroom exploded with a crack and a rain of broken glass. The pressure on her chest and the grip on her face released immediately as Wanda’s knees gave out. Darcy’s arms shot out impulsively to catch her before she hit the ground. Wanda’s head lolled backward, and Darcy struggled for a moment to keep them both upright.

“Wanda?” she said urgently. “Wanda—wake up!”

Steve had struggled to his feet by then and stumbled back over in the dim, silvery light. “Darcy, be careful—”

“She’s fine,” Darcy cut him off with certainty. Whatever had been oppressing her was gone—there was no trace of the sickness she’d felt before. Just everything sweet and familiar and _Wanda_ that she’d grown up with. “She’s not…” she trailed off and shook Wanda’s limp body again. “Come on, Wanda, open your eyes.”

To her relief, Wanda groaned and pushed her feet back onto the ground to support herself. Her brow furrowed before her eyes finally fluttered open. “Darcy?”

“Hey,” she said, taken aback by the rush of emotion in her throat. Green eyes. Wanda's eyes. “Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay; I got you.”

Wanda managed to stand up for a moment before she looked around the trashed bathroom—the water and broken glass everywhere, the red marks on Darcy’s face and neck, the dent in the wall where Steve’s elbow had crashed when she’d thrown him—and back to Darcy. “Oh God,” she whispered. “Darcy. I didn’t…I swear—I couldn’t stop him—” Her face blanched even further. “Morgan—”

“She’s safe,” Darcy promised, taking her by the arms. “Cassie has her. They’re okay.” She didn’t know that for sure. She only knew they were down on the next level, locked in their room. It was very likely that they weren’t okay and wouldn’t be for a long time…but her brain could only handle one nightmare at a time.

Steve was sitting on the porch with his head in his hands. She was surprised. If it had been her—if she didn’t owe anyone in this house anything and every moment spent here was worse than the last—she would have run screaming. Peeled out and hopped the ferry back to the mainland as quickly as she could, leaving all this madness in the rearview mirror. She stood a few feet away, unsure of what to say—if anything. She opened her mouth and closed it twice before she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Who’s Sharon?”

Steve didn’t look at her. He closed and rubbed at his eyes. “She was my partner.”

Darcy swallowed hard and crossed her arms over her chest. “Was?”

“First real lead we had on Rumlow,” he said, keeping his voice steady. His eyes on the ground. “Someone called in a tip that he was laying low in LA—she went by herself to check it out—never came back.” He shook his head. “We had to consider it unrelated—wrong place, wrong time kinda thing—because nothing ever really pointed to Rumlow having anything to do with it…”

She bit her lip. “Until today?”

He looked up finally. “Darcy, what the hell was that?” he motioned to the house. “I mean—what…? That was…that was him, wasn’t it? Or was it—”

Panic rose like bile in her throat. “It was him,” she said as quickly as she could, holding up her hands. There was nothing to lie about anymore. Steve couldn’t protect her from the truth anymore than she’d been able to protect herself. “It was him—it was his…I don’t know,” she shook her head. “His spirit or his ghost or…” she stopped herself. “It doesn’t make a difference. His spirit might be gone but I’m the one that killed his body and that’s all that matters. I’ll—” she felt faint again, her chest rising and falling quickly as her breath grew shorter with the realization of what she was doing. “I’ll tell you everything—I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you how I did it and what I used and where I buried him, I’ll—”

“Wait—”

“Just—please,” her voice broke. “I’ll cooperate, but please, Steve. Please just don’t arrest me in front of my kids, okay?”

He was on his feet then; he crossed the porch to stand in front of her and his hands fell to her arms. “Stop,” he said firmly. “Just…just hold on a minute.”

“Why?” she asked. “This is what you came here for—I’m not going to lie anymore, I promise, I just want this to be over—”

“Darcy,” he said softly. “I don’t…” He sighed and shook his head. “Look, whatever is going on here—I don’t understand it. But I know it’s not what I came here for.” He dropped his hands. “I thought I was coming here to catch a bad guy because usually, that’s what I do. That’s _all_ I do. But I wasn’t expecting…” he stopped. It felt like a long time before he looked up to meet her eyes. “You asked me how many times I read your letter?”

Darcy swallowed hard again. “Steve—”

“I think I read it a thousand times,” he admitted quietly. “I told myself I was coming here to bring in Rumlow but really…” his throat bobbed. “I came here for you.” She felt a heavy, familiar weight sink slowly into her stomach and she wanted to press her hand over his mouth, keep him from saying anything that would make what she had to admit even more difficult. “I know I’m mixed up about a lot of things,” he went on when she couldn’t bring herself to stop him. “But I’m not mixed-up about you…about how I feel about you.”

“Yes, you are,” she said softly. “I know you don’t think so but…” Darcy pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she didn’t have to say this. Wishing that she could just let him put his arms around her and stay and keep her safe and spend the rest of her life pretending this was real. Wishing that she was allowed to have something—someone—this good. She put her hand on his chest, meaning to push him away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do more than let her palm rest over his heart. “Steve, the reason you’re here and you don’t know why…and the reason you think it’s for me…” she drew a steadying inhale. “It’s because I sent for you.”

Steve’s brow lifted. “What do you mean?”

She felt her face contort in shame. “When I was a little girl I—I cast a spell so that I’d never fall in love. I dreamed up a man who was everything I could have ever wanted—someone who couldn’t possibly exist.” She lifted her eyes from where they’d trained on his collar and forced herself to look at him. “But you do. And I’m so sorry. I would _never_ have done any of it if I’d thought…” The words died on her lips. She didn’t know how to finish that thought.

“So, you’re saying that what I’m feeling…it’s just…” he looked lost somewhere between hurt and confused. “It’s just one of your spells?”

She swallowed again and nodded. “It’s just magic. It’s not real…and I know you’re going to say that it is,” she rushed on before he could object. “But it isn’t. It can’t be.” Another wave of emotion stung behind her nose. “I’ve been under a love spell before and I know that it feels real in the moment…but when it’s done you won’t be able to tell what was real and what was—” she stopped again and clenched her jaw once, shaking her head before she forced herself to keep going. “I can’t do that to you, Steve. I can’t let you think that this is something you want when I know that it isn’t.”

His hands fell to her hips gently, holding her in place like they belonged there. “And you’re so sure this isn’t something that I want?”

She managed a small, sad smile. “I wish it was,” she admitted. “But if I let you stay here…I wouldn’t know if it was because you wanted to be here or if it was because of the spell.” She sniffled unintentionally. “And you wouldn’t know if it was because I wanted you to stay or if I just didn’t want to go to prison so…”

To her surprise, Steve only shrugged. “Well, I mean, all relationships have problems, don’t they?” Darcy snorted a quiet laugh before she could stop herself and shook her head. His hand came up beneath her chin and tilted her face to his. “How about you do what you think you have to do,” he said carefully, his thumb traced gently along her jaw. “And I’ll do what I have to do. And we’ll just see where we end up.” Before she could stop him, he lifted her chin half an inch more and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. He pulled away too soon and turned to walk slowly down the porch steps. He stopped as he closed the front gate behind him and turned back, a thoughtful look on his face. “All the things you believe in, Darcy,” he said with a glance at the house behind her before he looked back. “And you can’t believe that I could have wished for you, too?”

Wanda was asleep on the couch by the time Darcy came back inside. The uneven afghan Aunt May had crocheted in the sixties was tucked beneath her chin, an untouched cup of tea on the coffee table. Darcy stopped at the foot of the stairs and ground the heels of her hands hard against her eyes. Outside, the clouds had finally opened and the rain hitting the windows as she climbed the stairs to her daughters’ room would have been soothing if it hadn’t sounded quite so much like the ticking of a clock.

Or a time bomb.

“I know that what happened today was really, really scary,” Darcy said, sitting between them on Cassie’s bed. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.” She tightened her arms around them as Morgan cuddled into her side.

Cassie looked up, her eyes full of too much concern for a nine-year-old. “Is Aunt Wanda going to be okay?”

“Yes,” she nodded firmly. “She’s sick, but we’re going to make her better.” That sounded so easy to say out loud. As if she had any idea what had really happened to Wanda. As if she had any idea how to fix it. “And you know that she loves you both very, _very_ much, don’t you?” They mirrored her nod. “And she would never, _ever_ hurt you.”

“I know it wasn’t her,” Morgan said quietly, her voice muffled by Darcy’s dress. “But whoever it _was…_ whoever made her do that—” she looked up and shook her head slowly. “There’s no good in him.”

Darcy kissed her head. “I know,” she agreed. “I’m going to make sure he can’t hurt any of us—or anyone else—ever again.” She looked each girl in the eye. “Do you believe me?”

They nodded together; two pairs of big, solemn eyes. Morgan pursed her lips in thought. “Is it okay to stay up here for a while?” she asked with a quick glance around the room. “I don’t want to go downstairs yet.”

“You can stay up here as long as you want,” Darcy assured them. “Come down whenever you’re ready.”

Morgan had hopped off the bed to retrieve a book from her shelf while Cassie walked with Darcy toward the hallway. Darcy pushed her hair away from her face and offered the best she could at a comforting smile. “You want me to make you some hot chocolate?” she asked when they’d reached the doorway. Cassie shook her head and bit her lip. Darcy swallowed hard and crouched down so they could be at eye-level. “I am so proud of you, Cass,” she said, forcing down the lump that had been trying to rise in her throat all afternoon. “And your daddy would be proud too. You do such a good job of taking care of everyone—Morgan, me, Aunt Wanda.” She swiped her thumb over Cassie’s cheek. “It wasn’t magic that saved Morgan today, you know that?” she reminded her, relieved when the words were enough to crack a tiny smile at the corner of Cassie’s lips. “It was you.”

Her daughter’s arms went around her neck in a hug. Darcy let her knees hit the floor and she held Cassie tight, letting her hang on as long as she needed. She was surprised when she felt Cassie nudge her hair out of the way so she could whisper in her ear. “You need to be careful, Mommy,” she said, not letting go of Darcy’s neck. “That bad man that hurt Aunt Wanda...I think he's going to come back.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyy guess what's hard to write? Basically anything that isn't sexy impromptu make-outs between Darcy and Steve. This one gave me a bit of a stress too, my sweet kits so please be gentle. I'm trying to stay faithful to the original while incorporating a few different points of my own. This chapter is pretty faithful, though. I hope you like. <3 <3 <3

Cassie’s warning stayed with her while she wandered back downstairs and into the kitchen. Everything was hurting. Her throat. Her chest. Her eyes. There were tears trapped behind her nose, stinging at her eyes, that she was adamantly keeping at bay. All Darcy really wanted, she realized with a sick, joyless laugh when she put the kettle back on, was a nice long bath.

But that wasn’t happening. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to stand in that bathroom again with the memory of what Wanda— _No,_ her brain corrected her swiftly, _not Wanda. Brock–-_ had almost done smacking her in the face every time she’d looked at the tub.

 _I couldn’t breathe, Mommy,_ Morgan’s terrified cried echoed in her ears. _She wouldn’t let me go!_

Darcy shuddered unintentionally. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Cassie hadn’t been there. If Morgan had been alone while her mother was off feeling sorry for herself. Morgan was a strong little girl, but she would have been no match for an adult holding her down—especially not if Wanda’s body was charged with whatever it was that had made her so inhumanly strong when she’d thrown Steve across the room.

The kettle whistled, disturbing Darcy’s darkening thoughts. She pushed them forcefully from her head and focused on one tiny step at a time in making herself a cup of tea.

Open the cupboard.

Pick a cup.

Spoon leaves into the diffuser.

Pour the water.

She didn’t let her mind wander until the tea was steeping. The water swirling in the cup, slowly turning darker made her think of the dark blonde of Steve’s hair. The soft trace of his fingers against her skin. The undeniable heat and sweetness of his lips on hers.

_And you can’t believe I could have wished for you, too?_

Tears rose hot and unforgiving in her throat and she pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob before she could choke it back.

What a mess this all had turned out to be.

Darcy allowed just two tears to drop onto the counter when she shut her eyes before she sniffed the rest of them back and pressed the back of her hand to the tip of her nose and looked toward the ceiling, blinking rapidly.

She’d be fine, she told herself. She’d get herself and Wanda and her girls through this. And the next thing. And the thing after that. And one day she’d turn around and she wouldn’t remember Steve’s name, or that stupid spell that had brought him here. The sight of a rose bush wouldn’t make her want to vomit. She wouldn’t remember the way Wanda had gnashed her teeth and growled like a monster.

The girls wouldn’t remember any of this nightmare. They wouldn’t hide upstairs in their room or look at Wanda any differently than they had a week ago. They’d be fine. They’d all be fine.

She dumped a teaspoon of sugar into her tea and let the spoon go to stir itself as she turned off the stove and put the jar of tea leaves back in the cupboard.

Darcy had always found lying to herself to be much easier than lying to anyone else.

She had only just choked and swallowed down the bulk of her tears when something touched her back. She jumped at the warm pressure between her shoulder blades. She relaxed after a second when the familiar smell of Wanda’s cigarettes and perfume enveloped her at the same time her sister’s willowy arms came around her to hug her from behind.

Darcy swallowed hard and brought a hand up to pat Wanda’s arms, folded over her chest. “Are you hungry at all?” she asked faintly. She wasn’t, but she felt like someone in the house should eat something.

Wanda shook her head, not moving her chin from where she’d dropped it onto Darcy’s shoulder; a piece of blonde hair brushed between their cheeks. She made a move to untangle herself from her sister, but Wanda’s grip only tightened, locking Darcy in place.

She tried again; Wanda’s arms remained rigid, unmoving.

“Wanda,” she laughed, weak and unconvincing when she realized Wanda had wound one foot between hers and she couldn’t move without knocking them both over. “C’mon,” she tried again. “Wanda what’s—” The words died in her throat. The question cut in half by the warm, wet stripe Wanda licked up the column of her neck.

“ _I told you,_ ” Nails dug into Darcy’s arms. Everything inside her went cold and that rancid, rotten taste returned to the back of her tongue. Wanda’s voice was no longer her own but the same icy rasp she’d heard upstairs. The words she whispered were raw and wrapped around an unearthly, rattling hiss. _“You’re so much prettier when you smile.”_

Darcy closed her eyes and took a steadying inhale. She clenched her jaw and ground her words between her teeth. “You can’t have my sister.”

A dark laugh rumbled beside her ear. “She’s already mine.”

Darcy’s hand closed around the only thing in reach and she tossed her scalding hot tea into Wanda’s face. It was enough to earn her a cry of surprise and pain that loosened the vice-like grip of her arms enough for Darcy to break free and turn so they were face-to-face.

Wanda’s eyes were black again. Her features were set in hard, cold lines. Darcy shook her head. “No, she’s still in there,” she said quietly, afraid that if she raised her voice, it would betray her uncertainty, her fear that she might be wrong. “She’s stronger than you ever gave her credit for.”

A sickening, self-satisfied smirk pulled at Wanda’s lips. “Is that what you think?”

A bolt of rage flashed through Darcy at the sound of Brock’s laughter coming from Wanda’s mouth. Before he could utter another word, she lunged forward and her fist connected with Wanda’s left temple. They crashed the floor together and it took a moment of shock and struggle for Darcy to realize what had happened. She jumped back to her feet, waiting for a display of the preternatural strength she’d seen earlier.

But Wanda’s body was still on the ground. Her chest rose and fell, putting Darcy’s immediate fear at ease as the front door opened behind her. She froze, eyes wide, and turned slowly to see Jane and Natasha in the doorway. Sunburned and each holding a plastic cup of frozen coffee, they froze at the same time, their expressions each paused in surprise at the scene before them.

After what felt like a long time, Natasha blinked and looked at Jane. “Okay, you were right,” she shrugged easily. “Stopping for coffee was a bad idea.”

They’d done stranger things as a family than tie Wanda to one of the kitchen chairs with a sachet of rock salt, sage, and charcoal stuffed in her mouth, but at the moment, Darcy couldn’t remember any. There was no keeping Cassie and Morgan upstairs once they’d heard their aunts’ voices and they sat together in the squashy armchair while Darcy sat on the sofa with her head tossed back, staring at the ceiling. Natasha had her arms crossed tightly while she looked with disapproval from Darcy to where Jane was examining the still-unconscious Wanda and back again.

“If only someone in this room had tried to warn you about keeping secrets,” she said tightly.

Darcy groaned and grabbed the nearest throw pillow and covered her face with it. “I know,” she said into the fabric. “I’m sorry.”

“When I said your anger was becoming corrosive,” Jane reminded from where she’d crouched to monitor Wanda’s pulse. “What did you think I meant? That you were getting dark circles under your eyes?” Darcy didn’t have an answer, so she groaned again when Jane continued. “You can’t practice magic and resent it at the same time.”

“It gets confused,” Natasha added. “That’s how accidents happens.” She cleared her throat pointedly. “Like botched resurrections.”

“I _know_ ,” Darcy repeated emphatically, dropping the pillow with a heavy sigh. “I realize that I messed up—I messed up about as bad as you _can_ mess up, okay? I get it,” she glared at her cousins. “But I’m asking for help now. I am _begging_ for your help,” she corrected herself. “So please, just help me fix this—help me get Wanda back.”

Jane stood up and pulled open one of Wanda’s eyelids, the head beneath her hand lolling back unpleasantly as she did so. “He’s crammed into every inch of her,” she said plainly. Her voice sounded clinical, like she was talking about one of her patients. Darcy had to wonder if she did that to keep from admitting how she really felt about Wanda’s condition—if she was just as scared as Darcy was. “And he’s not going to leave without a fight.”

“Good,” she said firmly. “I want to fight him. I want to kick his ass all the way to hell where he belongs. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Natasha rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “It can’t just be us. We need a full coven—what is that, nine women?”

“Thirteen,” Jane corrected. “It’s going to take thirteen to do this right.”

Darcy felt her eyes narrow. “Thirteen?” she repeated. “There’s three of us. Where the hell are we going to find ten more women who are willing to help us? It’s not like any of us have any friends.”

“Do they have to be friends?” Cassie’s question pulled all three of their heads in her and Morgan’s direction.

“No…” Natasha said slowly. “Just willing to help.”

Cassie shrugged. “You could try the phone tree, Mommy.”

The last time the phone tree had been activated was the previous February when a nor’easter had dumped seven feet of snow on the island overnight and school had shut down. Before that, it had been when Barbara Modica’s son, Jordan, had come home from visiting his father in New York for the weekend and brought a case of chicken pox with him—he’d managed to infect the entire second grade. No one in the history of the PTA, the school district, or the island as a whole, could remember anyone ever activating the phone tree before the school year had even started.

But luckily for Darcy there was no rule against it. Luckier still that the phone tree was such a time-honored tradition that it didn’t matter how you felt about the person whose name was above or below yours, you were still held to its single, solitary rule: if you were called, you called the next name on the list and you relayed the message as it had been given to you.

So, while preparations were being made for a good, old-fashioned exorcism at the house on Cordelia Street, phones across the island were lighting up as each member of the phone tree did her duty.

_“No, Darcy’s the one who called but Wanda’s the one who need the help—”_

_“Something about her sister—she’s in really bad shape.”_

_“Are you calling Hope next?”_

_“Just broke up with some abusive bastard—I guess he’s been hanging around. She’s having trouble getting rid of him.”_

_“Great. See you there.”_

_“Someone should call Christine.”_

_“Oh! I almost forgot—”_

_“Oh—one more thing—”_

_“Can you bring a broom?”_

Daisy and Jemma weren’t on the phone tree, but they were the first to arrive—wooden broomsticks in hand and with eyes that sparkled with excitement. Jane put them to work with Natasha in the kitchen where they’d hauled the Aunts’ cast iron cauldron up from the basement and set a banishing potion to boil over the open fire on the stove.

Cassie and Morgan were tasked with clearing the shelves beneath any mirrors of knickknacks and photos. They set out the old iron candlestick holders and set heavy white candles on each spot. Darcy paused in her pacing for a moment, watching how careful they were—how excited they were to be part of this—hardly scared at all. She bit her lip and shoved back the fear she’d been holding onto since Peter died and crossed the room to stand between them. “Wanna see something cool?” she asked, looking from one girl to the other. They exchanged a quick, confused look and nodded excitedly. Darcy smiled and leaned down to the candle right between them. She closed her eyes like she had a million times and conjured the little flame somewhere around her heart. She let it warm her up for a moment before she inhaled and blew on the wick, pushing the flame from her chest and past her lips until she heard a gasp from either side and opened her eyes to see the candle lit before her.

“Mommy how did you do that?” Morgan asked with wide, glittering eyes.

“Duh,” Cassie scoffed. “She did it with her magic.”

“That’s right,” Darcy nodded. “Want me to teach you how?”

Cassie looked up, looking like she was trying not to be hopeful. “Really?”

She leaned down and kissed them both. “Really, really.”

The first of the women arrived in a pair, having carpooled over. They looked nervous to be standing on the front porch—despite both having come to the back door at _least_ once, if Darcy was remembering correctly—until Natasha’s warm and brilliant smile welcomed them. “Now’s not the time to be shy,” she assured them, pulling them both inside. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She led them into the kitchen, as she did with the other who arrived one at a time, steering them carefully past the living room where Wanda was still constrained to her chair.

The knockout punch that Darcy had delivered had worn off by then and Brock’s spirit had remained firmly locked in Wanda’s body. The purification bag they’d stuffed in her mouth while she’d been unconscious had soaked her body in sweat even after she’d spat it out. Her fingernails were ripped and torn from the way they’d been clawing at the wooden arms of the chair. Her eyes were black and ringed red, and she was eerily, totally silent while she watched their every move.

Darcy kept Cassie and Morgan in the kitchen which was, for the first time any of them could remember, full of people. Jane and Natasha had arranged the group of women around the butcher block table with an efficiency that would have made Aunt Pepper glow with pride. Everyone had a job. Stirring the foul-smelling brew over the stove, sorting ingredients from the pantry, assembling protection sachets.

And they were _all_ talking. Not gossiping. Not glowering in resentful or fearful silence. They were talking across the table while they worked, swapping stories and telling jokes like they were right at home. Darcy watched from the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, not quite believing her eyes. All the years she had wanted this—all the birthday parties where no one came except her family, all the nights she’d spent hoping for an invitation to a sleepover or a movie night or a girl scout meeting, all the time she’d hidden in some far corner of the lunch room with a book, pretending she was happier eating alone day after day—

“You okay?” Jane appeared at her side. Her harsh tone from earlier had melted away and she glanced over her shoulder toward the living room. “Considering the circumstances.”

Darcy nodded. “Yeah…just…um…” she bit her lip. “There’s so many people here.”

Jane raised her eyebrows. “I know,” she said quietly, looking back the group where Natasha was laughing with Maria Hill and Abby Brand like they were old friends. “It’s weird when people surprise you.”

Darcy was about to respond when the doorbell rang. She exchanged a look with Jane before made her way to the foyer. She pulled open the door and blinked in surprise. “Christine.”

She’d never seen Christine Everhart look nervous before, but as she stood beneath the lamp on the Owens’ front porch, she chewed on her thumbnail and fidgeted with the broom in the other hand. Nervous was the only word for it. “Hi, Darcy. I—um…”

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Darcy said evenly, her hand still firmly on the door.

“Well,” Christine stood up a little straighter and coughed. “I’ve always wanted to see the inside of this house…ever since I was a little girl.” Her eyes widened briefly, as if she hadn’t meant to admit that out loud, and she glanced down at her shoes for a second before she looked back up. “But obviously, I understand if you don’t want me to—”

“No, no,” Darcy shook her head. “Please. Come in,” she said and stood to the side, welcoming Christine into the house with a motion of her hand. “We need all the help we can get.”

Jane’s eyebrows shot up briefly at the sight of their last guest, but she recovered quickly as Darcy showed Christine into the kitchen with the rest of the women. “Ladies,” she said in a commanding voice that made anyone forget how tiny she was. “Thank you all for coming.” A hush fell over the room and the bright cheerful atmosphere from only a few minutes before dropped away as they were all led into the living room where Wanda was still constrained.

Darcy watched Brock’s dark eyes counting the women as they entered one by one and formed a circle around the chair with their broomsticks. The moment the last was in place, his spirit locked eyes with Darcy and Wanda’s teeth gnashed with a another inhuman growl. “Do you think I’m scared of your little book club, big sister?” His voice was rasping, dark and deep, and watching it come from Wanda’s dry, cracked lips filled Darcy with white hot rage. “Just try and force me out,” he growled before he snapped Wanda’s jaws twice like he might sink her teeth into anyone who got too close. “I dare you.”

From behind Wanda, on the other side of the circle, Natasha raised her eyes to meet Darcy’s and shook her head slightly, her message clear: _Do not engage_. “The spirit trying to claim our sister is powerful and dark,” she said to the women in their circle who had all begun to look anxious again. “But the only hope we have of banishing it is with our hearts and minds in agreement—all connected to save Wanda’s life. So please, take a moment and clear yourselves of anything that might keep you from that goal.”

All thirteen women took a breath in at the same time and let it out together. On Jane’s signal, they bent and picked up their broomsticks, holding them end-to-tip at arms’ length. Hex bags around their wrists and determination Darcy could feel flickering to life in their hearts. A broad circle of confinement and protection around Wanda.

Jane and Natasha exchanged a look before Natasha nodded and Jane cleared her throat. “Let’s begin.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing is stronger than this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God this took me so long to write! So long, in fact, that I actually forgot that I hadn't finished it and was wondering why I couldn't remember if anyone liked the ending.
> 
> Which, uh, no you couldn't have. Because I didn't write it yet. Oops. Working on it right now, friends, I promise.
> 
> Anyway, fun fact: exorcisms are super hard to write, I don't recommend it. I borrowed stuff from The Conjuring, Stranger Things and obviously the original source material for this chapter. With a twist. Just a little twist. Gosh I hope you guys like this. 
> 
> <3

It wasn’t working.

Darcy had watched the magic descend on the women in the circle.

_Ut opponitur tenebris/ Levis est servanda/ simul cordibus vestris_

Had watched the weight of the spell take hold of the darkness leeching the light from Wanda’s every cell and try to force it out.

It wasn’t working.

They kept chanting, kept casting.

_Una cum spiritibus,/ Custodi animam hanc lucem,/ Non sunt tenebrae et lucrari_

Brock’s spirit just kept digging in deeper, gnashing Wanda’s teeth and breaking her fingernails against the wooden arms of the chair, cutting her skin while he thrashed her body against the ropes.

_Ut opponitur tenebris/ Levis est servanda/ simul cordibus vestris_

But it wasn’t working.

Darcy kept looking around, her heart stuck in her throat even as she repeated the spell over and over with the rest of the coven, waiting for Jane or Natasha to open her eyes, to look at Wanda and realize they had to try something else.

_Una cum spiritibus,/ Custodi animam hanc lucem,/ Non sunt tenebrae et lucrari_

But what else was there to try?

They kept chanting.

The magic kept rising, the energy practically crackling in the spaces between the women in the circle. Darcy kept her eyes on her sister. She was still in there, somewhere. Darcy could feel it. Choking on darkness, dangling on the edge of a cliff, caught between wanting to be saved and wanting to let go.

_Ut opponitur tenebris/ Levis est servanda/ simul cordibus vestris_

She was still chanting when Brock’s eyes snapped open and locked with hers. She felt a rush of cold shoot through her veins and the corner of Wanda’s lips twisted upward in a sickening smirk. Everything inside her lurched in dread. To her horror, she saw the legs of the chair begin to shift. Moving like someone was pushing the chair, shuffling it from side to side.

“Stop,” Darcy said faintly, unsure if she was talking to the room or the thing wearing her sister’s face. But the chair moved again even more deliberately, and Darcy realized that no matter who she’d been speaking to, no one was listening. “Stop it,” she said again anyway. She raised her voice to compete with the chanting. “Stop! Please!”

_Una cum spiritibus,/ Custodi animam hanc lucem,/ Non sunt tenebrae et lucrari_

But the women in the circle didn’t hear her. They had their eyes shut, their hands locked on their brooms. They were under the same spell, rocking in place to the rhythm their chanting had created. Even Cassie and Morgan, sitting together on the stairs, hands clasped tightly together, had their eyes closed and added their voices to the chorus.

Darcy watched, unable to move, to unlock herself from her place in the circle, as the legs of the chair lifted off the ground. Still tied to it, Wanda rose into the air. A foot, then three feet, then higher until the top of her head nearly brushed the ceiling. Darcy’s mouth hung open, useless and silent while the chair hovered there for what felt like an eternity.

_Ut opponitur tenebris/ Levis est servanda/ simul cordibus vestris_

_Una cum spiritibus,/ Custodi animam hanc lucem,/ Non sunt tenebrae et lucrari_

“No!” she gasped as something snapped inside her and the chair plummeted to the ground, shattering into a thousand wooden shards. “Stop!” Finally, her hands unstuck themselves from her broom and she stepped back while Wanda scrambled to her feet, her bloodied fingernails picking and scratching the ropes apart. “Please! We have to stop!”

Across the circle, Jane’s eyes finally opened just as Wanda had kicked away the last of her bindings and charged at Darcy. “Wanda—no!”

But it was too late. Wanda had run full force toward the empty space in the circle, ignoring that Darcy’s broom was still there, being held by the women to her left and right. The shock from the barrier they’d created slammed into her, hoisting her body up again and throwing her high into the air before she landed on the pile of broken wooden pieces with a sickening thud.

The chanting stopped abruptly. One by one, the women opened their eyes, each horrified to see Wanda’s body lying twisted and battered on the ground.

“Wanda,” Darcy cried, her heart in her throat again. She pawed for a space to get through. “Wanda, come on, honey,” she said, stretching her arm out uselessly, trying to reach her. “Open your eyes. You’re okay,” she insisted. “Show me you’re okay.”

She thought she might collapse with relief when Wanda finally groaned and made a move to roll to her side. But as soon as she touched the nearest broom, Natasha’s hand closed around her wrist. “Darcy, _no,_ ” she said firmly. “You can’t break the circle.”

“What?” she breathed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Don’t get any closer to her,” Natasha said, her voice grave.

“She needs our _help,”_ she insisted, her voice hoarse. “I’m not going to let her lay there—”

“Yes, you are,” Jane chimed in, appearing on her other side.

“Guys,” Darcy looked from one cousin to the other. “This isn’t working. We have to try something else.”

“And we will,” Jane assured her. “But Brock is still in control,” she reminded. “And if you cross that barrier, he’ll make her kill you.”

Her vision blurred and she swallowed hard. “Okay,” she relented softly. “I won’t…I won’t touch her but…” her breath hitched in her chest. “But we can’t just let her lay there while we figure out something else.”

The silence that fell over the room was thick and sticky with hopelessness before finally, unexpectedly, Christine Everhart cleared her throat. “What if…what if instead of making his spirit weaker, we make Wanda’s stronger?”

“What do you mean?” Daisy asked, glancing from Darcy to Christine and back again.

Christine moved her shoulder. “Talk to her. Make her—I don’t know—remember who she is and help her fight. From the inside.”

Darcy looked back at Natasha and Jane. “It might help,” she said, afraid of letting anything that resembled hope sneak into her voice.

They set the brooms down together, still moving as one, and positioned them so Darcy could sit as close to Wanda as possible without breaking the circle. The other women stayed in the room, sitting on chairs and edges of tables or the floor, but backed away from the brooms. Darcy sat cross-legged and took a deep breath. She was only laying a foot away, but Wanda had never felt so far away from her. “Wanda,” she began softly. “Wanda, I know you’re still in there. I need you to get up, okay? Get up and come back to us.” She paused. “Come back to _me,_ Wanda. Please.”

But Wanda didn’t move. She kept breathing, and though her eyes fluttered open, she only looked straight at the ceiling, her face blank and her body too exhausted to indicate if she had any fight left in her.

“Do you know what June 16th is?” Natasha surprised Darcy by sitting down beside her, speaking directly to Wanda. When there was no answer, she went on. “That’s the first day you came out of your room after you came to live with us. Darcy had been coming down for breakfast for a few days already but not you,” she shook her head with small, sad smile in the corner of her lips. “I was in the kitchen by myself and all of a sudden this little voice said, ‘I’d like some Frosted Flakes, please.’ And I turned around and there you were, sitting at the table, all big eyes and messy hair, and _so little_.” Her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “And I think about that every June 16th because that was the first time—even though Janey and I had been here for two years already—that was the first time I felt like it was home, sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast with you.”

“I remember in sixth grade,” Hope Van Dyne spoke up from across the room, pulling everyone’s attention to her as she slid from her chair onto the floor. She coughed. “There were these older boys shooting a pellet gun at a stray cat outside of the school. And I was too afraid to tell them to stop but Wanda—” she paused and shook her head. “Wanda, you ran over and pushed one of them down even though he was twice your size. You made enough of a scene that the cat was able to get away and then—” she scoffed. “Then you got suspended for it and you didn’t even care. I could have said something—I could have helped you and told the principal that you were just trying to—” she stopped. “But I didn’t. And I just remember wishing I could be half as brave as you were.”

Darcy felt her heart swell and tears rush to her eyes again as another woman, Carol, sat up straighter from her seat on the edge of the end table. “You remember flirting with Mr. Storm to give us all more time on our AP exams?” she asked with a half-smile, keeping her eyes firmly on Wanda, like they were having a real conversation. “I think half the class only passed because you kept talking to him—making sure he was distracted and giving us all extra time to finish.”

Wanda’s head turned to the side and Darcy’s breath caught in her throat. Wanda’s eyes were her own again, soft green and glassy with tears. “Darcy…” she breathed and reached her hand out slowly, spreading her fingers wide.

“Yes,” Darcy cried. “Yes, I’m here. We’re all here,” she looked up at the group. “Keep talking to her,” she begged. “Please, I think it’s helping.”

“You’ve never missed my birthday,” Cassie piped up from the stairs. She kept her hand laced with Morgan’s as they slowly came down into the room. “Even when you lived so far away that you couldn’t send me a card,” she went on. “You call me every year—”

“And me, too,” Morgan chimed in as they reached the circle together. “Every year.”

“And you sing to us,” Cassie added. “And tell us about how you were there when we were born and how Mommy threw ice chips at Daddy,” she giggled as Natasha made room for them to sit between her and Darcy. “And that you loved both of us right away.”

“Even though we were weird and squishy,” Morgan added, and a soft laugh rippled through the room.

Darcy didn’t know how long they sat there but it felt like everyone had a story about Wanda. Some kindness she had bestowed upon them that had gone unappreciated. A favor she’d done without expecting—or receiving—anything in return. Stories about shared gym clothes when someone’s period had come unexpectedly, or how Wanda had taken the blame when someone else had been caught smoking in the girl’s bathroom.

Listening to all the stories and memories in the low, flickering candlelight, Darcy could not name the feeling sitting high and heavy in her chest. The reality of the very real possibility of losing Wanda was finally starting to sink in. The idea that the world might be short the light that her sister carried inside herself, the sparkle she woke up with every day. Even these women surrounding them who didn’t love Wanda—had never loved Wanda—felt like they were losing something important, something they hadn’t noticed swirling through their memories, stitching moments together in time.

“I remember the first spell you ever helped me with,” Jane said, finally joining the rest of them on the floor. “It was just a spell for sweeter dreams—it should have taken about ten minutes…but it took _so_ long,” she sniffled around her laugh. “Because you were _so bad_ at prepping ingredients. You took forever to crush the dicentra and you made such a mess with the strawberries. But you were so proud of yourself,” she pressed her lips together and sniffed again. “I was proud of you, too.”

Wanda had made it all the way onto her side, her fingers stretched out, stopping just short of brushing the broomstick. Tears streaked her face, her hair was stuck to her sweat-soaked skin, there were cracks at the corners of her lips and her nails were ripped down to nothing. “Darcy, please,” she whispered in a voice heavy with tears.

Darcy got down further, laying on her side to be as close as possible. She lay her head down on the floor next to Wanda’s. “I’m trying, Wanda,” she insisted hoarsely. “We’re all trying to bring you back. Just stay with us, okay? Please?”

Another tear slid down Wanda’s cheek. “I’m so tired.”

Darcy’s vision blurred. “I know, but you have to hold on. You have to fight.”

“He’s going to come back,” she whispered. “And I won’t be strong enough to fight him off again. Just—” she hitched a breath. “Just let him have me, Darce. Nobody else has to get hurt. Please—just let me go.”

She shook her head against the floor. “He can’t have you,” she insisted. “You belong _here_ , with _us._ Not with him.” She sniffled and felt the tears slip from her eyes. “And you promised me,” she added. “You remember? You promised me we’d die together—on the same day. Just like the aunts and this—” she shook her head again. “This is not that day.”

The edge of Wanda’s lips twitched into a sad, tired smile. “You’ve always taken such good care of me,” she said. Her fingertips reached for Darcy again before she pulled away. “But there’s not much of me left…I’m letting you off the hook this time.”

Wanda’s eyes fluttered closed again.

“Wanda, come on,” Darcy begged. “Stay awake—please?”

But Wanda had slipped away again and before Darcy could make another plea, everything came to a swift and terrible halt by the sound of three, sharp knocks on the floor between them.

_Maria, no._

Darcy bolted upright with the thought. Everyone had heard the knocks. A current of unease coursed into the room.

“Darcy,” Jane asked said, her voice heavy with trepidation. “What are you doing?”

“This isn’t happening,” Darcy said firmly, getting to her feet. “I’m not losing anyone else,” she looked from Natasha to her daughters and then to Jane. “None of us are.” She took off for the staircase, pointing behind her. “Keep that circle secure.”

There was a trick step on the flight between Jane and Natasha’s rooms. Right in the middle the wood lifted to reveal a cache of Owens heirlooms no one had ever known what to do with. Among the bundles of letters no one ever read and medals from military service of a relative whose name no one could recall, Darcy found what she was looking for.

The rope that the governors of Massachusetts had used to hang Maria Owens was just as thick and sturdy as it had been the first, second, and third time they’d strung it around her neck. The noose had been unwound long ago, but the rest of the coil of heavy, scratchy twine was very much intact.

The women had all assembled back in the circle by the time Darcy returned to the living room, having come through the kitchen for one last thing she prayed would work. Confused, they each passed the rope around until it had unfurled into another circle. “We need to keep her contained long enough to get her down to the water,” she told them.

“The water?” Natasha repeated. “Darcy, what the hell are you doing?”

“Praying there’s enough of a witch left in Wanda to save her life,” she said, grabbing hold of the two rough ends of the rope and crossing them over one another to tighten the circle. It took longer than it would have if she’d been standing, but Darcy had spent the first ten years of her life helping her sister to get dressed while she was mostly asleep. This was no different. The rope was easier to work with than the brooms and all she had to do was wait for one tiny shift to slip the circle beneath Wanda’s narrow shoulders. The women in the circle kept passing the ends around, making the rope coil around and around Wanda until her arms and legs were wrapped tight enough that, if they only touched the ropes, Darcy, Jane and Natasha could still maneuver her to her feet.

Shuffling everyone, still in a sort of circle, still carrying their brooms, while Darcy whispered instructions down to the shoreline in the dead of night was slightly trickier than she had realized it would be, but they made it. By the time the clocktower was striking three, twelve women had reformed their circle and were holding their broomsticks out in front of them again. From outside the circle, Darcy walked backward into the water, motioning for them to follow her. Inside the circle, Wanda was just conscious enough to shuffle her feet and follow the pull and suggestion of the coven.

Darcy was close enough to hear the first growl of Brock’s spirit waking up as Wanda’s feet sank into the wet, rocky sand. Despite everything, a flicker of hope caught in her chest and she smiled briefly. “Good morning, Brock,” she said, beckoning them out a little further.

Another growl and Wanda’s head shot up, her eyes gone black as the night around them. Brock looked down at the rope constricting him and the water lapping at Wanda’s knees and back at Darcy. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, that slithering hiss of a voice sounding even colder beneath the soft whisper of the wind off the sea.

“I thought I’d bring you someplace you feel comfortable,” she said, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible. “You like the water, don’t you Brock?”

Wanda’s jaw snapped and her shoulders wriggled, the rope falling away, leaving the brooms as the only barrier between the sisters. “You could say that.”

“You like to drown women, don’t you?” she asked, taking a few steps closer. “Like Ava…like you tried to do with Wanda…”

Wanda’s broken lips twisted into a sickening smirk. “I think they look pretty,” Brock growled from deep in her throat. “Splashing under the surface.”

Darcy took another step back, the circle moved with her. They were almost waist-deep now. She steeled herself with a deep breath. “I’m glad we had this chance to talk,” she said carefully, praying that the two women on either side of the broom between Darcy and Wanda knew when she needed them to do their part.

“And why is that?” Brock ground the words through Wanda’s clenched teeth.

“Because I have a lot of regrets in my life,” she said, reaching into the pocket now hidden beneath the waves. “But getting to kill you twice will never be one of them.”

Brock lunged right as the broomstick slid away and Darcy caught Wanda’s wrist in her hand. There was an inhuman screech when she pulled Wanda’s pearl-handled switchblade from her pocket and sliced across the old scar in the center of her palm. “Your blood,” she said fiercely before turning the knife on herself and opening her own scar. “My blood.” Another screech as she locked her hand with Wanda’s and threw her other arm to pull her tight. “Nothing is stronger than this,” she whispered in her sister’s ear and pulled them both under the water.

When they talked about it later—and of course, they would talk about it later—no one would quite remember what happened next. Some said that a pillar of black smoke shot up from the water and exploded. Others said that it was a blinding white light. A few others said that in the moment before they were blown backward, there were more than just the twelve of them in the sea that night. That they’d been surrounded by dozens and dozens of women, hands entwined and reciting the spell along with them.

But what they _could_ agree on was this: Darcy had cut her and Wanda’s hands open and dragged them both beneath the waves. The circle had closed around them and with the recitation of the spell they’d tried before one final time, something had happened. Something magical.

Whether it had been a white light or black smoke or some combination of the two, it had blown the circle outward with enough of a crash to shatter the windows of the nearest lighthouse. Each woman had lifted her head, struggled to her feet, to find herself in the surf, soaked to the skin and still clutching a broomstick.

And in the middle, Wanda and Darcy were standing together, arms around one another, laughing and sobbing and clinging to each other like they might never let go.

It was the littlest girls who approached them first, throwing arms around Wanda’s waist and letting Darcy scoop them up to squeeze them tightly to her chest. And then Jane and Natasha pulled themselves up from the shore to join them. And one by one, it only felt right that everyone else was pulled along until there was a pile of women, drenched in spells and sea water, holding onto one another as dawn broke and new day came crashing onto the island. A day greeted by laughter and tears and the knowledge that whatever they’d done that night had changed them, all of them, and that life could never go back to the way it had been before.

None of them wanted it to anyway. 


	16. Chapter 16

“Mommy, guess what?” Cassie asked as she and Morgan bounced between Darcy and Wanda on the walk home from the shop one afternoon in early October.

“What?”

“Monica Rambeau invited me to her birthday party.”

Darcy felt her eyebrows lift. “She did?”

Cassie nodded with a big smile, revealing the space where she’d just lost another tooth. “Yup. She passed out invitations at recess and me _and_ Morgan got one.”

Morgan peered around her sister, still swinging Wanda’s hand. “Can we go, Mommy? Please?”

“Of course you can,” Darcy said with a smile. “You can hang the invitation up on the fridge when we get home, so we don’t forget.”

“Aunt Wanda?” Morgan looked up and squinted in the late afternoon sun. “Were you and Mommy ever Brownies?”

Wanda laughed and scrunched her face. “Nope; can’t say that we were.”

“Anya and Grace and Sasha are all Brownies and they said I could go with them next time and see if I want to be a Brownie too.” Morgan swung her head around Cassie again. “Would that be okay?”

Darcy blinked. “Uh, yeah,” she said around another smile. “I can call Anya’s mom and see what that’s about,” she shrugged.

They rounded the bend and the house came into view. Cassie and Morgan broke away and tore down the street, slamming screen doors and hollering hellos to anyone who was home. Wanda stopped at the mailbox while Darcy wound her way through the garden to where Natasha was sitting at the table, a long letter written on the paper in front of her.

Darcy grinned when she noticed the Russian characters. “Sending a secret code to James _Buh-channon_ Barnes?” she asked as she dropped down into an empty chair.

Natasha smiled and tapped her pen against the paper. “Fifteen years is a long time to keep someone at arm’s length,” she said softly. “Felt like a good time to ask him to come for a visit.”

Darcy’s smile softened and she rested her chin on her hand. “Can’t wait to meet him.”

Wanda had gone through the house to get to the yard, carrying the mail with her as she sank into another empty seat. “You’ve got some serious social butterflies on your hands, Mama,” she said with a grin, glancing over her shoulder back toward the house, where they could still hear the girls talking excitedly to each other. “Birthday parties and Brownies and sleepovers…”

Natasha shook her head. “Pretty sure they’ve gone to more playdates and parties in the last two months than the rest of the Owens women combined in the last two hundred years.”

Darcy snorted and was about to respond when the back door opened, and Cassie poked her head out. “Auntie Nat, can you help me with my spells?”

Natasha closed her notebook as she got to her feet. She gave Darcy an inquisitive look. “Still okay with you?”

She nodded. “Oh, but no fire, okay?” she called after Nat. “Unless she starts cleaning up her own scorch marks.”

Her request was met with a grin and a little salute before Natasha made her way back inside. Darcy looked across the table to see Wanda staring at the back corner of the garden. The roses were gone—the banishment potion that Natasha and Jane had brewed that night had been poured into the ground and they’d disappeared overnight. The ground was lush and green and unbroken, like it had never been disturbed. “You okay?” Darcy asked, catching the thoughtful expression on her sister’s face.

Wanda nodded. “I never thanked you,” she said softly, giving the garden one last look before she turned back to Darcy. “For everything.”

Darcy looked down at the painted, wrought-iron table. “Don’t,” she said firmly. “You did all the fighting,” she reminded her when she looked up again. “Never would’ve worked if you weren’t the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

Wanda smiled and shook her head. “I’m not that strong,” she said quietly. “I’m just stubborn.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” Darcy reminded. “You’re still an enormous pain in the ass.”

Wanda snorted unattractively and covered her mouth as Darcy giggled and reached over to lace their scarred hands together. She grew pensive again, looking down at their palms. “I’m still not really sure what happened,” she said softly, her lips dipped down in a thoughtful frown. “How did getting Brock’s spirit out of me break the curse?”

Darcy pursed her lips in thought. The truth was, she didn’t know. She hadn’t known been thinking about breaking the curse when she’d sliced open Wanda’s palm that night. All she’d been trying to do was keep her sister alive. The trick in the water was a gamble—playing the old adage that you can’t drown a witch, but you can wash away an evil spirit.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Maria cast the spell when she had her heart broken by a man. She cursed us all, thinking she was keeping us safe but…” Darcy’s shoulder moved. “There are so many things worse than having your heart broken by a man. I know she was trying to protect herself—protect all of us, I guess. But all she did was punish any of us who were brave enough to fall in love.” Her lips buzzed lightly as she blew out a heavy breath. “Maybe because we were fighting to keep you with us, and you were fighting just as hard to stay...that's what broke the curse. All of us fighting for the kind of love Maria didn't understand.”

Wanda nodded, quiet for what felt like a long time before she looked up again. “Do you think Mom was there?”

Darcy’s smile was slow and thoughtful. Wanda had always held a more romantic view of their mother. She’d been spared the reality of what her grief had done to her, the grim discovery that Darcy had made and protected her from. While Darcy couldn’t separate the good from the bad most days, Wanda was the one who still wore her jewelry on occasion, had grown up asking Darcy for memories she could press into her own mind for safekeeping. “I hope so,” she said quietly. “I hope she knows what we did.”

“She knows,” Wanda said with such certainty, Darcy decided to believe her. “I think they all know,” she added softly. “Mom, the aunts, Maria…” she smiled softly. “I think they all know what we did.”

If anyone would be able to sense such things, Darcy reminded herself, it would be Wanda.

They fell quiet again, watching the wind rustle the flowers and leaves of the garden, listening to the myriad windchimes from the porch before Wanda sat up straight and cleared her throat. “Oh, before I forget,” she untangled her hand from Darcy’s and grabbed the stack of mail. “You got a letter, big sister,” she retrieved a large cardboard envelope from the bottom of the pile and wiggled her eyebrows before she handed it over. “From Arizona.”

Darcy frowned. “Who do I know in—” the question died on her lips as her eyes fell on the return address. _Office of the US Marshals – Southwest._ She pulled the tab and zipped open the top of the envelope. The letter inside had not been folded and was typed on government letterhead. “ _Dear Ms. Owens,_ ” she read aloud under her breath. “ _This letter is to inform you that the investigation into the disappearance of Brock Rumlow has been concluded. Personal affects of Mr. Rumlow located in his vehicle provided identification allowing this office to rule cause of death as accidental, resulting from a single-driver motor vehicle incident. Thank you for your cooperation, please contact the Southwest Field Office with any further questions. Sincerely, Steven G. Rogers, US Marshal.”_

Steve had signed the bottom of the letter above his name, but nothing else was handwritten. Darcy set the letter on the table and upended the envelope. A familiar, heavy gold signet ring dropped out and bounced to the ground. She bent and picked it up, squinting at the skull and crossbones for a moment before she held it out to Wanda.

Wanda took it without hesitation and threw it, hard, over the fence toward the bay. “So long, lover,” she muttered, shaking her head before she turned back to see Darcy sweeping her hand into the corners of the envelope, giving it another, futile shake. She bit her lip. “Pretty sure he’s not in there, Darce.”

Darcy stopped her fidgeting and set the envelope under Steve’s letter. She’d been trying so hard not to think of him, to tell herself she wasn’t glancing toward the front door every time she heard a car drive past, wasn’t hoping he’d show up someday. Stay for dinner, for breakfast, for…ever. Her eyes scanned the letter again. _How about you do what you think you have to do,_ he’d said before he’d left for the last time. _And I’ll do what I have to do. And we’ll just see where we end up._ She looked up at her sister. “What would you do, Wanda?”

Wanda raised her eyebrows and her lips slid into a half-smile. “What wouldn’t I do…for true love?”

Before Darcy could answer that, Wanda kissed the top of her head and took the rest of the mail inside, leaving her sister in the garden to sort out of her thoughts and feelings alone.

The girls were in bed when she came to tuck them in. Morgan’s eyes were already closing when her goodnight kiss was delivered, but Cassie was still very much awake when Darcy perched on the edge of her bed. “Close those eyes, little girl,” she warned with a smile. “It’s a school night.”

“I will,” Cassie promised, turning on her side to face her mother. “But I have something for you.”

“Something for me?” Darcy repeated, brushing Cassie’s bangs from her eyes.

“We found it awhile ago,” she said and pulled a small, worn, leather book from beneath her pillow. “Aunt Wanda said it was yours when you were a little girl,” she added, as though Darcy might not have recognized that journal anywhere. She took it carefully, running her finger along the edges of the soft pages before she looked up at her daughter. “I thought you might want it back—since you’re allowed to be magic again.”

_Allowed to be magic…_

The words brought a smile to Darcy’s face as she traced where she’d carved her name into the once-soft leather spine. “Thank you, baby,” she said, leaning down to wrap Cassie in a hug. “I guess I need to get you one of these, huh?”

Cassie’s smile doubled in size. “Really?”

Darcy kissed her forehead. “A proper witch needs a proper spell book,” she said, echoing what Aunt May had told her when she’d placed the blank journal in her hands a few decades earlier. “But we can talk about it tomorrow,” she said, standing up. “You need to sleep now.”

“I love you, Mommy.”

She kissed her again. “I love you too.”

There was a handful of discarded dolls and a wet towel from Morgan’s bath clumped outside the door. Darcy sighed and bent to pick up, pausing when she heard her youngest daughter’s voice on the other side of the closed door. “Did you give it to her?”

“Yeah,” Cassie answered.

“Do you think she’s going to use it?”

“I don’t know, Morgie.”

“Do you think if she does, she’s going to use it to bring Steve back?”

Darcy slung the towel over her arm and pressed a smile between her lips.

“I don’t know that either,” Cassie said patiently. “She could use it for all kinds of spells.” There was a pause and a rustle of sheets. “And anyway, she doesn’t need a spell to bring Steve back,” she reminded, sounding like she spoke around a yawn. “Pretty sure she could just call him on the phone.”

“But that’s not romantic,” Morgan insisted before she yawned too.

Darcy suppressed a snicker.

“We did what we could,” Cassie said. “Now go to sleep.”

“I think Steve’s going to come back,” Morgan said with conviction. “I think he and Mommy are supposed to be together.”

“Yeah,” Cassie agreed sleepily. “Me too. Go to sleep.”

She hung the towel up in the bathroom and placed the dolls on the counter before she turned out the lights and made her way slowly back downstairs. She’d meant to head to the kitchen, do some work with a cup of chamomile, but she wound up walking through the dining room and heading to the greenhouse instead.

She set her spell book on Aunt Pepper’s table—vaguely wondering if she’d ever think of it as anything other than Aunt Pepper’s—and let it fall open to a barely-remembered page in the center. She looked down at the blocky, deliberate printing of her ten-year-old hand and smiled.

 _He’ll always hear me when I call him,_ she had written as the first line, _No matter how far apart we are._

Her fingers brushed the petals of the potted flowers lined up beneath the windows, trailing over amaranth and pentas until she came to rest on a pot of sweet-smelling white dittany. She cut a sprig and twirled the thick green stem between her fingers as she made her way into the yard and stared up at the moon. Full and clear and golden. She wondered where Steve was—if he was still home in Arizona, or out on the road again, working some other case. Another string of cheap motels where he’d throw his clothes and files all over the place and somehow make it feel like home. She closed her eyes and let herself remember everything she’d been pushing back since he’d left. That soft, shy smile, his deep, calming voice, the way he’d trailed his fingers under her jaw and tilted her face up for a kiss.

“Come back,” she said, her voice just above a whisper that was carried off on the warm, night breeze. “I miss you.” She opened her hand and let the flower float up and away on the wind.

Darcy was digging in the garden when the car pulled up that Saturday. If she’d been inside, she would have seen the way Morgan perked up first, able to sense who it was long before the sound of the engine shut off or the door closed. She would have seen Cassie race her sister to the front window, only to both be pulled away by Jane and Wanda before they could charge out the door and wrestled back into the kitchen, where, in between bouncing on their tiptoes, they told Natasha to make sure there was enough for one more for breakfast.

But Darcy was outside. She didn’t see any of that. Didn’t hear anything until footsteps crunched the walkway behind her and she stopped her digging. A rush of warmth, sweetness, and something crisp like the first bite of a fresh apple swept over her, causing her to set her trowel down and close her eyes for just a second, testing herself, making sure this was real.

When she turned around, still crouched, Steve’s shy smile was waiting for her. She felt her breath leave her as she pulled off her gardening gloves and put her hand in his, allowing him to pull her to standing. “Hi,” he said softly when she was nearly close enough to kiss him.

“Hi,” Darcy bit her lip and let her hands drift upward to rest on his chest. She could feel his heart beating beneath her palm. "You came back."

One of Steve’s hands had come to rest on her hip. The other came up to hold her face, his thumb brushed her cheek. "Well, you asked me to,” he reminded her before he pulled her an inch closer and lowered his lips to hers. There was no hesitation this time, no voice nagging at her that this was wrong or dangerous or stupid. There was just Darcy and Steve and the feeling of something that had been missing all her life finally fitting into place. When she dropped back down from her tiptoes and broke the kiss, the corner of Steve’s lips slid into a half-smile. “And I’m out of shaving cream.”

Darcy laughed out loud, her heart feeling lighter than it ever had and laced her fingers with his. She pulled him toward the house, where he stayed for breakfast…

…and then for dinner.

….and then forever.


	17. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always feel like Dumbledore at the End-of-Term feasts when I post these last chapters. "Another fic, done!" 
> 
> But for real, big huge thanks to all of my lovely Darcyland friendships who helped me cast the right spells to make this fic a reality. Everyone who left me a comment or a reblog on Tumblr to share, I love you. I kiss you. 
> 
> And as always, I really hope you like it. 
> 
> <3

In the hour before sunset on October 31st, the house on Cordelia Street was buzzing with energy and charged with a low-level panic.

“Has anyone seen my knee socks?”

“They’re hanging up in your closet, Cass!”

Questions and answers were being called back and forth on all levels of the house while five of the six Owens women scrambled around getting ready. Pairs of stockings and shoes were lent and borrowed and dresses zipped around the cacophony of so many feet up and down the stairs.

“Does anyone have a free hand to lace me up?”

“What time is it?”

“Five after!” Steve called up from the kitchen.

The calamity stopped and he craned his head in time to see Darcy’s dark curls flip over the railing. “Five after _six_?”

For her benefit, he checked his watch again. “Yeah—you’ve got plenty of time.”

He was, apparently, the only one who thought so because the moment he suggested it, the noise and commotion of so many Owens getting ready at once kicked into high gear and Steve resigned himself to the kitchen once more.

“They do this every year?” Sam Wilson looked skeptically from Steve as he returned to his stool at the island over to Bucky, who was shaking his head as he finished his beer.

“Every year,” Bucky assured him with a half-smile.

“They all _actually_ jump off the roof and no one gets hurt?” Sam had never been to an Owens Family Halloween. He’d only been in town for six months, five months of which had been spent getting to know Wanda well enough for her to agree to have a cup of coffee with him. Wanda, who had spent the previous four and a half years purposefully and happily single, had finally given in to Sam’s patient, teasing requests and agreed to go out with him. For their fourth date, she’d invited him to the house for Halloween.

“Well, they don’t so much jump,” Steve said slowly.

“Please don’t say they fly,” Sam cut him off. “Wanda said they fly, and I know there’s no way they fly.”

“Listen, man,” Bucky laughed. “I can’t explain it and I’ve seen it five times now.”

Bucky had been around for as many Halloweens as Steve. He’d shown up a few days after Natasha’s letter had reached him and married her at the courthouse a week later. They’d spent fifteen years apart, seeing each other once or twice a year and writing letters in between, with Natasha assuring him over and over that she _didn’t_ love him, with him promising—at her insistence—that he didn’t love her either.

A broken curse made room for a lot of happiness, it turned out.

“Dad…” Morgan’s world-weary voice preceded her arrival in the kitchen with Joey on her hip. She let her head fall to the side as her two-year-old brother maintained his hold on her hair, not seeming to mind that he was putting a good chunk of it in his mouth.

Steve mimicked her dramatic sigh. “Morgan…”

“Can’t you _please_ tell Mom that I should be allowed to jump with them?” she asked as she deposited Joey onto the counter and climbed onto the stool beside Sam.

Steve pretended to consider this. “I could,” he reasoned, tilting his head in thought. “If you can answer two questions for me.”

“What?” She looked hopeful.

“Number one: what’s the minimum age for jumping off the roof?”

Morgan’s shoulders dropped. “Fourteen.”

He nodded. “And number two: how old are you?”

“Thirteen,” she muttered, folding her arms onto the table.

“Then it sounds like I can’t tell Mom that you should be allowed to jump off the roof,” he shrugged. “Sorry kiddo.”

“But that’s so unfair!”

“It seems pretty fair, Morg,” Bucky commented, reaching over to ruffle her hair.

“And anyway, if you jump off the roof,” Sam reasoned good-naturedly, “who are we supposed to hang out with?”

She looked skeptically from Sam to Bucky to Steve and back again. “You guys have each other,” she reminded. “And Joey.”

The littlest man beamed from his seat on the counter. “I Joey!” he cried, pointing to himself.

Steve watched Morgan try unsuccessfully to suppress a smile before she leaned over and pinched Joey’s side affectionately.

“Joey’s cool,” Sam assured her, reaching out to give the boy a tickle to his neck before he added, “but he’s not as cool as you.”

Morgan sighed. “You’re just saying that because Dad’s not going to let me jump off the roof.”

“No way,” Sam exclaimed. “I’m saying that because it’s true.”

“ _And_ because I’m not going to let you jump off the roof,” Steve added with a smile.

By the time they were all ready, the crowd outside the house had swelled to its usual proportions. Darcy couldn’t remember when their tradition hadn’t drawn a crowd, but a crowd that was there to be frightened, to have their suspicions confirmed and full of people who would later pretend they hadn’t been there at all, was nothing like the group gathered on the lawn that night.

This was the same crowd that had come to Darcy’s aid when she asked them to five years ago—the crowd that had helped save Wanda’s life. These were the same kids Morgan and Cassie went to school with—kids who included them in sports and clubs, who invited them to sleepovers and hung out on the porch on nice spring days, all doing their homework together and sipping lavender lemonade. The lawn was full of people who came to her store and kept her in business, who happily took recommended Jane as their preferred physician, who had dropped off gifts and casseroles and notes of encouragement when Joey had been born.

One by one, they stepped out of the east-facing window of Darcy and Steve’s bedroom, onto the highest rooftop. Darcy kept her hand on Cassie’s arm, holding her steady while she made her way slowly onto the roof.

Natasha had gone first and handed them all their black parasols, grinning broadly from beneath her pointed black hat. “Ready, Cass?” she asked, leaning over Jane to catch Cassie’s eye.

After waiting her entire life to be able to take part in this tradition, Cassie was more than ready. Darcy smiled as her daughter nodded quickly before she turned to look at her. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flush with excitement. “This is going to be so much fun,” she squealed.

Darcy chuckled and pressed a kiss to her fingers before she placed it on Cassie’s cheek. “You’ll get a real one when we take these hats off,” she promised.

Wanda was the last out and took her parasol in one hand and laced the fingers of the other with Darcy, giving her a quick squeeze. “I love Halloween,” she said with a wide smile, a familiar sparkle back in her eye that had been missing for too long.

Darcy squeezed back. “Me too.”

They opened their parasols, Jane counted to three, and they stepped off the edge of the roof.

And just like they had for hundreds of years, the Owens women touched down onto the ground without a scrape.

It was magic that kept them from plummeting straight down. Magic that kept them afloat and gave them a soft place to land. But as the cheering crowd swarmed them, Darcy had to think that this was a kind of magic too.

The kind of magic that brought a whole town together after so many centuries of fear and hatred keeping them apart. The kind of magic that felt like love and friendship and so many things she’d grown up thinking she’d never have.

Whatever kind of magic it was, it had filled the holes in Darcy’s heart, had healed the broken pieces of her family, and had saved her sister’s life. Whatever kind of magic it was, Darcy was grateful for it.

As Steve’s arms went around her and he greeted her with a kiss, she leaned into him, as happy and content as she’d been for the last five years. As happy and content as she knew she would be. With him. With her family. With her never-normal life.

And for the rest of her days, the only time Darcy ever heard knocking was when it was on the front door.

The sound of friends coming to visit.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I can't help myself, I also made the following for this fic:
> 
> Photoset: https://66.media.tumblr.com/271efdadcc84e51c9a5e617f644c0c05/ba2e4eae44ed4585-c1/s540x810/c233ed5ccc167984be39970541d382784d832f45.jpg
> 
> Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5GzdopuFFATgBsHwvAIWtL
> 
> I would love to know what you think!


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